Apparatus and method for efficient graphics virtualization

ABSTRACT

An apparatus and method are described for allocating local memories to virtual machines. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a command streamer to queue commands from a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) or applications, the commands to be distributed from the command streamer and executed by graphics processing resources of a graphics processing unit (GPU); a tile cache to store graphics data associated with the plurality of VMs or applications as the commands are executed by the graphics processing resources; and tile cache allocation hardware logic to allocate a first portion of the tile cache to a first VM or application and a second portion of the tile cache to a second VM or application; the tile cache allocation hardware logic to further allocate a first region in system memory to store spill-over data when the first portion of the tile cache and/or the second portion of the file cache becomes full.

BACKGROUND Field of the Invention

This invention relates generally to the field of computer processors.More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus and method forefficient graphics virtualization.

Description of the Related Art

Rapid advances have recently taken place in graphics processor unit(GPU) virtualization. Virtualized graphics processing environments areused, for example, in the media cloud, remote workstations/desktops,Interchangeable Virtual Instrumentation (IVI), rich clientvirtualization, to name a few. Certain architectures perform full GPUvirtualization through trap-and-emulation to emulate a full-featuredvirtual GPU (vGPU) while still providing near-to-native performance bypassing through performance-critical graphics memory resources.

With the increasing importance of GPUs in servers to support 3D, mediaand GPGPU workloads, GPU virtualization is becoming more widespread. Howto virtualize GPU memory access from a virtual machine (VM) is one ofthe key design factors. The GPU has its own graphics memory: eitherdedicated video memory or shared system memory. When system memory isused for graphics, guest physical addresses (GPAs) need to be translatedto host physical addresses (HPAs) before being accessed by hardware.

There are various approaches for performing translation for GPUs. Someimplementations perform translation with hardware support, but the GPUcan be passed-through to one VM only. Another solution is a softwareapproach which constructs shadow structures for the translation. Forinstance, shadow page tables are implemented in some architectures suchas the full GPU virtualization solution mentioned above, which cansupport multiple VMs to share a physical GPU.

In some implementations, the guest/VM memory pages are backed by hostmemory pages. A virtual machine monitor (VMM) (sometimes called a“Hypervisor”) uses extended page tables (EPT), for example, to map froma guest physical address (PA) to a host PA. Many memory sharingtechnologies may be used, such as Kernel Same page Merging (KSM).

KSM combines pages from multiple VMs with the same content, to a singlepage with write protection. That is to say, if a memory page in VM1(mapping from guest PA1 to host PA1), has the same contents as anothermemory page in VM2 (mapping from guest PA2 to host PA2), may use onlyone host page (say HPA_SH) to back the guest memory. That is, both guestPA1 of VM1 and PA2 of VM2 are mapped to HPA_SH with write protection.This saves the memory used for the system, and is particularly usefulfor read-only memory pages of the guest such as code pages, and zeropages. With KSM, copy-on-write (COW) technology is used to remove thesharing once a VM modifies the page content.

Mediate pass through is used in virtualization systems for deviceperformance and sharing, where a single physical GPU is presented asmultiple virtual GPU to multiple guests with direct DMA, while theprivileges resource accesses from guests are still trap-and-emulated. Insome implementations, each guest can run the native GPU driver, anddevice DMA goes directly to memory without hypervisor intervention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A better understanding of the present invention can be obtained from thefollowing detailed description in conjunction with the followingdrawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a computer system with aprocessor having one or more processor cores and graphics processors;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a processor having one ormore processor cores, an integrated memory controller, and an integratedgraphics processor;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of one embodiment of a graphics processorwhich may be a discreet graphics processing unit, or may be graphicsprocessor integrated with a plurality of processing cores;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a graphics-processingengine for a graphics processor;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of thread execution logic including an arrayof processing elements;

FIG. 7 illustrates a graphics processor execution unit instructionformat according to an embodiment;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processorwhich includes a graphics pipeline, a media pipeline, a display engine,thread execution logic, and a render output pipeline;

FIG. 9A is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor commandformat according to an embodiment;

FIG. 9B is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor commandsequence according to an embodiment;

FIG. 10 illustrates exemplary graphics software architecture for a dataprocessing system according to an embodiment;

FIG. 11 illustrates an exemplary IP core development system that may beused to manufacture an integrated circuit to perform operationsaccording to an embodiment;

FIG. 12 illustrates an exemplary system on a chip integrated circuitthat may be fabricated using one or more IP cores, according to anembodiment;

FIG. 13 illustrates an exemplary graphics processor of a system on achip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IPcores;

FIG. 14 illustrates an additional exemplary graphics processor of asystem on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one ormore IP cores

FIG. 15 illustrates an exemplary graphics processing system;

FIG. 16 illustrates an exemplary architecture for full graphicsvirtualization;

FIG. 17 illustrates an exemplary virtualized graphics processingarchitecture including virtual graphics processing units (vGPUs);

FIG. 18 illustrates one embodiment of a virtualization architecture withan IOMMU;

FIG. 19 illustrates one embodiment in which graphics processing isperformed on a server;

FIG. 20 illustrates one embodiment for intelligently allocating a tilecache between virtual machines or applications;

FIG. 21 illustrates a method in accordance with one embodiment of theinvention;

FIG. 22 illustrates one embodiment in which buffering and arbitrationare employed to reduce blocking of one VM by another VM;

FIG. 23 illustrates a series of upstream and downstream queues employedin one embodiment;

FIG. 24 illustrates one embodiment in which shared local memory isallocated between VMs using a spillover into system memory;

FIG. 25 illustrates a method in accordance with one embodiment of theinvention;

FIG. 26 illustrates one embodiment of an architecture for provisioning amemory fabric;

FIG. 27 illustrates a method in accordance with one embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 28 is a block diagram illustrating a computer system configured toimplement one or more aspects of the embodiments described herein;

FIG. 29A-290 illustrate a parallel processor components, according to anembodiment;

FIGS. 30A-30B are block diagrams of graphics multiprocessors, accordingto embodiments;

FIG. 31A-31F illustrate an exemplary architecture in which a pluralityof GPUs are communicatively coupled to a plurality of multi-coreprocessors; and

FIG. 32 illustrates a graphics processing pipeline, according to anembodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerousspecific details are set forth in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the embodiments of the invention described below. Itwill be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that theembodiments of the invention may be practiced without some of thesespecific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devicesare shown in block diagram form to avoid obscuring the underlyingprinciples of the embodiments of the invention.

Exemplary Graphics Processor Architectures and Data Types

System Overview

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a processing system 100, according to anembodiment. In various embodiments the system 100 includes one or moreprocessors 102 and one or more graphics processors 108, and may be asingle processor desktop system, a multiprocessor workstation system, ora server system having a large number of processors 102 or processorcores 107. In one embodiment, the system 100 is a processing platformincorporated within a system-on-a-chip (SoC) integrated circuit for usein mobile, handheld, or embedded devices.

An embodiment of system 100 can include, or be incorporated within aserver-based gaming platform, a game console, including a game and mediaconsole, a mobile gaming console, a handheld game console, or an onlinegame console. In some embodiments system 100 is a mobile phone, smartphone, tablet computing device or mobile Internet device. Dataprocessing system 100 can also include, couple with, or be integratedwithin a wearable device, such as a smart watch wearable device, smarteyewear device, augmented reality device, or virtual reality device. Insome embodiments, data processing system 100 is a television or set topbox device having one or more processors 102 and a graphical interfacegenerated by one or more graphics processors 108.

In some embodiments, the one or more processors 102 each include one ormore processor cores 107 to process instructions which, when executed,perform operations for system and user software. In some embodiments,each of the one or more processor cores 107 is configured to process aspecific instruction set 109. In some embodiments, instruction set 109may facilitate Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC), ReducedInstruction Set Computing (RISC), or computing via a Very LongInstruction Word (VLIW). Multiple processor cores 107 may each process adifferent instruction set 109, which may include instructions tofacilitate the emulation of other instruction sets. Processor core 107may also include other processing devices, such a Digital SignalProcessor (DSP).

In some embodiments, the processor 102 includes cache memory 104.Depending on the architecture, the processor 102 can have a singleinternal cache or multiple levels of internal cache. In someembodiments, the cache memory is shared among various components of theprocessor 102. In some embodiments, the processor 102 also uses anexternal cache (e.g., a Level-3 (L3) cache or Last Level Cache (LLC))(not shown), which may be shared among processor cores 107 using knowncache coherency techniques. A register file 106 is additionally includedin processor 102 which may include different types of registers forstoring different types of data (e.g., integer registers, floating pointregisters, status registers, and an instruction pointer register). Someregisters may be general-purpose registers, while other registers may bespecific to the design of the processor 102.

In some embodiments, processor 102 is coupled with a processor bus 110to transmit communication signals such as address, data, or controlsignals between processor 102 and other components in system 100. In oneembodiment the system 100 uses an exemplary ‘hub’ system architecture,including a memory controller hub 116 and an Input Output (I/O)controller hub 130. A memory controller hub 116 facilitatescommunication between a memory device and other components of system100, while an I/O Controller Hub (ICH) 130 provides connections to I/Odevices via a local I/O bus. In one embodiment, the logic of the memorycontroller hub 116 is integrated within the processor.

Memory device 120 can be a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device, astatic random access memory (SRAM) device, flash memory device,phase-change memory device, or some other memory device having suitableperformance to serve as process memory. In one embodiment the memorydevice 120 can operate as system memory for the system 100, to storedata 122 and instructions 121 for use when the one or more processors102 executes an application or process. Memory controller hub 116 alsocouples with an optional external graphics processor 112, which maycommunicate with the one or more graphics processors 108 in processors102 to perform graphics and media operations.

In some embodiments, ICH 130 enables peripherals to connect to memorydevice 120 and processor 102 via a high-speed I/O bus. The I/Operipherals include, but are not limited to, an audio controller 146, afirmware interface 128, a wireless transceiver 126 (e.g., Wi-Fi,Bluetooth), a data storage device 124 (e.g., hard disk drive, flashmemory, etc.), and a legacy I/O controller 140 for coupling legacy(e.g., Personal System 2 (PS/2)) devices to the system. One or moreUniversal Serial Bus (USB) controllers 142 connect input devices, suchas keyboard and mouse 144 combinations. A network controller 134 mayalso couple with ICH 130. In some embodiments, a high-performancenetwork controller (not shown) couples with processor bus 110. It willbe appreciated that the system 100 shown is exemplary and not limiting,as other types of data processing systems that are differentlyconfigured may also be used. For example, the I/O controller hub 130 maybe integrated within the one or more processor 102, or the memorycontroller hub 116 and I/O controller hub 130 may be integrated into adiscreet external graphics processor, such as the external graphicsprocessor 112.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a processor 200 having oneor more processor cores 202A-202N, an integrated memory controller 214,and an integrated graphics processor 208. Those elements of FIG. 2having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements of anyother figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar tothat described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such. Processor200 can include additional cores up to and including additional core202N represented by the dashed lined boxes. Each of processor cores202A-202N includes one or more internal cache units 204A-204N. In someembodiments each processor core also has access to one or more sharedcached units 206.

The internal cache units 204A-204N and shared cache units 206 representa cache memory hierarchy within the processor 200. The cache memoryhierarchy may include at least one level of instruction and data cachewithin each processor core and one or more levels of shared mid-levelcache, such as a Level 2 (L2), Level 3 (L3), Level 4 (L4), or otherlevels of cache, where the highest level of cache before external memoryis classified as the LLC. In some embodiments, cache coherency logicmaintains coherency between the various cache units 206 and 204A-204N.

In some embodiments, processor 200 may also include a set of one or morebus controller units 216 and a system agent core 210. The one or morebus controller units 216 manage a set of peripheral buses, such as oneor more Peripheral Component Interconnect buses (e.g., PCI, PCIExpress). System agent core 210 provides management functionality forthe various processor components. In some embodiments, system agent core210 includes one or more integrated memory controllers 214 to manageaccess to various external memory devices (not shown).

In some embodiments, one or more of the processor cores 202A-202Ninclude support for simultaneous multi-threading. In such embodiment,the system agent core 210 includes components for coordinating andoperating cores 202A-202N during multi-threaded processing. System agentcore 210 may additionally include a power control unit (PCU), whichincludes logic and components to regulate the power state of processorcores 202A-202N and graphics processor 208.

In some embodiments, processor 200 additionally includes graphicsprocessor 208 to execute graphics processing operations. In someembodiments, the graphics processor 208 couples with the set of sharedcache units 206, and the system agent core 210, including the one ormore integrated memory controllers 214. In some embodiments, a displaycontroller 211 is coupled with the graphics processor 208 to drivegraphics processor output to one or more coupled displays. In someembodiments, display controller 211 may be a separate module coupledwith the graphics processor via at least one interconnect, or may beintegrated within the graphics processor 208 or system agent core 210.

In some embodiments, a ring based interconnect unit 212 is used tocouple the internal components of the processor 200. However, analternative interconnect unit may be used, such as a point-to-pointinterconnect, a switched interconnect, or other techniques, includingtechniques well known in the art. In some embodiments, graphicsprocessor 208 couples with the ring interconnect 212 via an I/O link213.

The exemplary I/O link 213 represents at least one of multiple varietiesof I/O interconnects, including an on package I/O interconnect whichfacilitates communication between various processor components and ahigh-performance embedded memory module 218, such as an eDRAM module. Insome embodiments, each of the processor cores 202A-202N and graphicsprocessor 208 use embedded memory modules 218 as a shared Last LevelCache.

In some embodiments, processor cores 202A-202N are homogenous coresexecuting the same instruction set architecture. In another embodiment,processor cores 202A-202N are heterogeneous in terms of instruction setarchitecture (ISA), where one or more of processor cores 202A-202Nexecute a first instruction set, while at least one of the other coresexecutes a subset of the first instruction set or a differentinstruction set. In one embodiment processor cores 202A-202N areheterogeneous in terms of microarchitecture, where one or more coreshaving a relatively higher power consumption couple with one or morepower cores having a lower power consumption. Additionally, processor200 can be implemented on one or more chips or as an SoC integratedcircuit having the illustrated components, in addition to othercomponents.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a graphics processor 300, which may be adiscrete graphics processing unit, or may be a graphics processorintegrated with a plurality of processing cores. In some embodiments,the graphics processor communicates via a memory mapped I/O interface toregisters on the graphics processor and with commands placed into theprocessor memory. In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 includes amemory interface 314 to access memory. Memory interface 314 can be aninterface to local memory, one or more internal caches, one or moreshared external caches, and/or to system memory.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 also includes a displaycontroller 302 to drive display output data to a display device 320.Display controller 302 includes hardware for one or more overlay planesfor the display and composition of multiple layers of video or userinterface elements. In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 includesa video codec engine 306 to encode, decode, or transcode media to, from,or between one or more media encoding formats, including, but notlimited to Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) formats such as MPEG-2,Advanced Video Coding (AVC) formats such as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, as well asthe Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE) 421 M/VC-1,and Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) formats such as JPEG, andMotion JPEG (MJPEG) formats.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 300 includes a block imagetransfer (BLIT) engine 304 to perform two-dimensional (2D) rasterizeroperations including, for example, bit-boundary block transfers.However, in one embodiment, 2D graphics operations are performed usingone or more components of graphics processing engine (GPE) 310. In someembodiments, GPE 310 is a compute engine for performing graphicsoperations, including three-dimensional (3D) graphics operations andmedia operations.

In some embodiments, GPE 310 includes a 3D pipeline 312 for performing3D operations, such as rendering three-dimensional images and scenesusing processing functions that act upon 3D primitive shapes (e.g.,rectangle, triangle, etc.). The 3D pipeline 312 includes programmableand fixed function elements that perform various tasks within theelement and/or spawn execution threads to a 3D/Media sub-system 315.While 3D pipeline 312 can be used to perform media operations, anembodiment of GPE 310 also includes a media pipeline 316 that isspecifically used to perform media operations, such as videopost-processing and image enhancement.

In some embodiments, media pipeline 316 includes fixed function orprogrammable logic units to perform one or more specialized mediaoperations, such as video decode acceleration, video de-interlacing, andvideo encode acceleration in place of, or on behalf of video codecengine 306. In some embodiments, media pipeline 316 additionallyincludes a thread spawning unit to spawn threads for execution on3D/Media sub-system 315. The spawned threads perform computations forthe media operations on one or more graphics execution units included in3D/Media sub-system 315.

In some embodiments, 3D/Media subsystem 315 includes logic for executingthreads spawned by 3D pipeline 312 and media pipeline 316. In oneembodiment, the pipelines send thread execution requests to 3D/Mediasubsystem 315, which includes thread dispatch logic for arbitrating anddispatching the various requests to available thread executionresources. The execution resources include an array of graphicsexecution units to process the 3D and media threads. In someembodiments, 3D/Media subsystem 315 includes one or more internal cachesfor thread instructions and data. In some embodiments, the subsystemalso includes shared memory, including registers and addressable memory,to share data between threads and to store output data.

Graphics Processing Engine

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a graphics processing engine 410 of agraphics processor in accordance with some embodiments. In oneembodiment, the graphics processing engine (GPE) 410 is a version of theGPE 310 shown in FIG. 3. Elements of FIG. 4 having the same referencenumbers (or names) as the elements of any other figure herein canoperate or function in any manner similar to that described elsewhereherein, but are not limited to such. For example, the 3D pipeline 312and media pipeline 316 of FIG. 3 are illustrated. The media pipeline 316is optional in some embodiments of the GPE 410 and may not be explicitlyincluded within the GPE 410. For example and in at least one embodiment,a separate media and/or image processor is coupled to the GPE 410.

In some embodiments, GPE 410 couples with or includes a command streamer403, which provides a command stream to the 3D pipeline 312 and/or mediapipelines 316. In some embodiments, command streamer 403 is coupled withmemory, which can be system memory, or one or more of internal cachememory and shared cache memory. In some embodiments, command streamer403 receives commands from the memory and sends the commands to 3Dpipeline 312 and/or media pipeline 316. The commands are directivesfetched from a ring buffer, which stores commands for the 3D pipeline312 and media pipeline 316. In one embodiment, the ring buffer canadditionally include batch command buffers storing batches of multiplecommands. The commands for the 3D pipeline 312 can also includereferences to data stored in memory, such as but not limited to vertexand geometry data for the 3D pipeline 312 and/or image data and memoryobjects for the media pipeline 316. The 3D pipeline 312 and mediapipeline 316 process the commands and data by performing operations vialogic within the respective pipelines or by dispatching one or moreexecution threads to a graphics core array 414.

In various embodiments the 3D pipeline 312 can execute one or moreshader programs, such as vertex shaders, geometry shaders, pixelshaders, fragment shaders, compute shaders, or other shader programs, byprocessing the instructions and dispatching execution threads to thegraphics core array 414. The graphics core array 414 provides a unifiedblock of execution resources. Multi-purpose execution logic (e.g.,execution units) within the graphic core array 414 includes support forvarious 3D API shader languages and can execute multiple simultaneousexecution threads associated with multiple shaders.

In some embodiments the graphics core array 414 also includes executionlogic to perform media functions, such as video and/or image processing.In one embodiment, the execution units additionally includegeneral-purpose logic that is programmable to perform parallel generalpurpose computational operations, in addition to graphics processingoperations. The general purpose logic can perform processing operationsin parallel or in conjunction with general purpose logic within theprocessor core(s) 107 of FIG. 1 or core 202A-202N as in FIG. 2.

Output data generated by threads executing on the graphics core array414 can output data to memory in a unified return buffer (URB) 418. TheURB 418 can store data for multiple threads. In some embodiments the URB418 may be used to send data between different threads executing on thegraphics core array 414. In some embodiments the URB 418 mayadditionally be used for synchronization between threads on the graphicscore array and fixed function logic within the shared function logic420.

In some embodiments, graphics core array 414 is scalable, such that thearray includes a variable number of graphics cores, each having avariable number of execution units based on the target power andperformance level of GPE 410. In one embodiment the execution resourcesare dynamically scalable, such that execution resources may be enabledor disabled as needed.

The graphics core array 414 couples with shared function logic 420 thatincludes multiple resources that are shared between the graphics coresin the graphics core array. The shared functions within the sharedfunction logic 420 are hardware logic units that provide specializedsupplemental functionality to the graphics core array 414. In variousembodiments, shared function logic 420 includes but is not limited tosampler 421, math 422, and inter-thread communication (ITC) 423 logic.Additionally, some embodiments implement one or more cache(s) 425 withinthe shared function logic 420. A shared function is implemented wherethe demand for a given specialized function is insufficient forinclusion within the graphics core array 414. Instead a singleinstantiation of that specialized function is implemented as astand-alone entity in the shared function logic 420 and shared among theexecution resources within the graphics core array 414. The precise setof functions that are shared between the graphics core array 414 andincluded within the graphics core array 414 varies between embodiments.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor500. Elements of FIG. 5 having the same reference numbers (or names) asthe elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in anymanner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limitedto such.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes a ring interconnect502, a pipeline front-end 504, a media engine 537, and graphics cores580A-580N. In some embodiments, ring interconnect 502 couples thegraphics processor to other processing units, including other graphicsprocessors or one or more general-purpose processor cores. In someembodiments, the graphics processor is one of many processors integratedwithin a multi-core processing system.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 receives batches of commandsvia ring interconnect 502. The incoming commands are interpreted by acommand streamer 503 in the pipeline front-end 504. In some embodiments,graphics processor 500 includes scalable execution logic to perform 3Dgeometry processing and media processing via the graphics core(s)580A-580N. For 3D geometry processing commands, command streamer 503supplies commands to geometry pipeline 536. For at least some mediaprocessing commands, command streamer 503 supplies the commands to avideo front end 534, which couples with a media engine 537. In someembodiments, media engine 537 includes a Video Quality Engine (VQE) 530for video and image post-processing and a multi-format encode/decode(MFX) 533 engine to provide hardware-accelerated media data encode anddecode. In some embodiments, geometry pipeline 536 and media engine 537each generate execution threads for the thread execution resourcesprovided by at least one graphics core 580A.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 500 includes scalable threadexecution resources featuring modular cores 580A-580N (sometimesreferred to as core slices), each having multiple sub-cores 550A-550N,560A-560N (sometimes referred to as core sub-slices). In someembodiments, graphics processor 500 can have any number of graphicscores 580A through 580N. In some embodiments, graphics processor 500includes a graphics core 580A having at least a first sub-core 550A anda second sub-core 560A. In other embodiments, the graphics processor isa low power processor with a single sub-core (e.g., 550A). In someembodiments, graphics processor 500 includes multiple graphics cores580A-580N, each including a set of first sub-cores 550A-550N and a setof second sub-cores 560A-560N. Each sub-core in the set of firstsub-cores 550A-550N includes at least a first set of execution units552A-552N and media/texture samplers 554A-554N. Each sub-core in the setof second sub-cores 560A-560N includes at least a second set ofexecution units 562A-562N and samplers 564A-564N. In some embodiments,each sub-core 550A-550N, 560A-560N shares a set of shared resources570A-570N. In some embodiments, the shared resources include sharedcache memory and pixel operation logic. Other shared resources may alsobe included in the various embodiments of the graphics processor.

Execution Units

FIG. 6 illustrates thread execution logic 600 including an array ofprocessing elements employed in some embodiments of a GPE. Elements ofFIG. 6 having the same reference numbers (or names) as the elements ofany other figure herein can operate or function in any manner similar tothat described elsewhere herein, but are not limited to such.

In some embodiments, thread execution logic 600 includes a shaderprocessor 602, a thread dispatcher 604, instruction cache 606, ascalable execution unit array including a plurality of execution units608A-608N, a sampler 610, a data cache 612, and a data port 614. In oneembodiment the scalable execution unit array can dynamically scale byenabling or disabling one or more execution units (e.g., any ofexecution unit 608A, 608B, 608C, 608D, through 608N-1 and 608N) based onthe computational requirements of a workload. In one embodiment theincluded components are interconnected via an interconnect fabric thatlinks to each of the components. In some embodiments, thread executionlogic 600 includes one or more connections to memory, such as systemmemory or cache memory, through one or more of instruction cache 606,data port 614, sampler 610, and execution units 608A-608N. In someembodiments, each execution unit (e.g. 608A) is a stand-aloneprogrammable general purpose computational unit that is capable ofexecuting multiple simultaneous hardware threads while processingmultiple data elements in parallel for each thread. In variousembodiments, the array of execution units 608A-608N is scalable toinclude any number individual execution units.

In some embodiments, the execution units 608A-608N are primarily used toexecute shader programs. A shader processor 602 can process the variousshader programs and dispatch execution threads associated with theshader programs via a thread dispatcher 604. In one embodiment thethread dispatcher includes logic to arbitrate thread initiation requestsfrom the graphics and media pipelines and instantiate the requestedthreads on one or more execution unit in the execution units 608A-608N.For example, the geometry pipeline (e.g., 536 of FIG. 5) can dispatchvertex, tessellation, or geometry shaders to the thread execution logic600 (FIG. 6) for processing. In some embodiments, thread dispatcher 604can also process runtime thread spawning requests from the executingshader programs.

In some embodiments, the execution units 608A-608N support aninstruction set that includes native support for many standard 3Dgraphics shader instructions, such that shader programs from graphicslibraries (e.g., Direct 3D and OpenGL) are executed with a minimaltranslation. The execution units support vertex and geometry processing(e.g., vertex programs, geometry programs, vertex shaders), pixelprocessing (e.g., pixel shaders, fragment shaders) and general-purposeprocessing (e.g., compute and media shaders). Each of the executionunits 608A-608N is capable of multi-issue single instruction multipledata (SIMD) execution and multi-threaded operation enables an efficientexecution environment in the face of higher latency memory accesses.Each hardware thread within each execution unit has a dedicatedhigh-bandwidth register file and associated independent thread-state.Execution is multi-issue per clock to pipelines capable of integer,single and double precision floating point operations, SIMD branchcapability, logical operations, transcendental operations, and othermiscellaneous operations. While waiting for data from memory or one ofthe shared functions, dependency logic within the execution units608A-608N causes a waiting thread to sleep until the requested data hasbeen returned. While the waiting thread is sleeping, hardware resourcesmay be devoted to processing other threads. For example, during a delayassociated with a vertex shader operation, an execution unit can performoperations for a pixel shader, fragment shader, or another type ofshader program, including a different vertex shader.

Each execution unit in execution units 608A-608N operates on arrays ofdata elements. The number of data elements is the “execution size,” orthe number of channels for the instruction. An execution channel is alogical unit of execution for data element access, masking, and flowcontrol within instructions. The number of channels may be independentof the number of physical Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) or FloatingPoint Units (FPUs) for a particular graphics processor. In someembodiments, execution units 608A-608N support integer andfloating-point data types.

The execution unit instruction set includes SIMD instructions. Thevarious data elements can be stored as a packed data type in a registerand the execution unit will process the various elements based on thedata size of the elements. For example, when operating on a 256-bit widevector, the 256 bits of the vector are stored in a register and theexecution unit operates on the vector as four separate 64-bit packeddata elements (Quad-Word (QW) size data elements), eight separate 32-bitpacked data elements (Double Word (DW) size data elements), sixteenseparate 16-bit packed data elements (Word (W) size data elements), orthirty-two separate 8-bit data elements (byte (B) size data elements).However, different vector widths and register sizes are possible.

One or more internal instruction caches (e.g., 606) are included in thethread execution logic 600 to cache thread instructions for theexecution units. In some embodiments, one or more data caches (e.g.,612) are included to cache thread data during thread execution. In someembodiments, a sampler 610 is included to provide texture sampling for3D operations and media sampling for media operations. In someembodiments, sampler 610 includes specialized texture or media samplingfunctionality to process texture or media data during the samplingprocess before providing the sampled data to an execution unit.

During execution, the graphics and media pipelines send threadinitiation requests to thread execution logic 600 via thread spawningand dispatch logic. Once a group of geometric objects has been processedand rasterized into pixel data, pixel processor logic (e.g., pixelshader logic, fragment shader logic, etc.) within the shader processor602 is invoked to further compute output information and cause resultsto be written to output surfaces (e.g., color buffers, depth buffers,stencil buffers, etc.). In some embodiments, a pixel shader or fragmentshader calculates the values of the various vertex attributes that areto be interpolated across the rasterized object. In some embodiments,pixel processor logic within the shader processor 602 then executes anapplication programming interface (API)-supplied pixel or fragmentshader program. To execute the shader program, the shader processor 602dispatches threads to an execution unit (e.g., 608A) via threaddispatcher 604. In some embodiments, pixel shader 602 uses texturesampling logic in the sampler 610 to access texture data in texture mapsstored in memory. Arithmetic operations on the texture data and theinput geometry data compute pixel color data for each geometricfragment, or discards one or more pixels from further processing.

In some embodiments, the data port 614 provides a memory accessmechanism for the thread execution logic 600 output processed data tomemory for processing on a graphics processor output pipeline. In someembodiments, the data port 614 includes or couples to one or more cachememories (e.g., data cache 612) to cache data for memory access via thedata port.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor instructionformats 700 according to some embodiments. In one or more embodiment,the graphics processor execution units support an instruction set havinginstructions in multiple formats. The solid lined boxes illustrate thecomponents that are generally included in an execution unit instruction,while the dashed lines include components that are optional or that areonly included in a sub-set of the instructions. In some embodiments,instruction format 700 described and illustrated are macro-instructions,in that they are instructions supplied to the execution unit, as opposedto micro-operations resulting from instruction decode once theinstruction is processed.

In some embodiments, the graphics processor execution units nativelysupport instructions in a 128-bit instruction format 710. A 64-bitcompacted instruction format 730 is available for some instructionsbased on the selected instruction, instruction options, and number ofoperands. The native 128-bit instruction format 710 provides access toall instruction options, while some options and operations arerestricted in the 64-bit instruction format 730. The native instructionsavailable in the 64-bit instruction format 730 vary by embodiment. Insome embodiments, the instruction is compacted in part using a set ofindex values in an index field 713. The execution unit hardwarereferences a set of compaction tables based on the index values and usesthe compaction table outputs to reconstruct a native instruction in the128-bit instruction format 710.

For each format, instruction opcode 712 defines the operation that theexecution unit is to perform. The execution units execute eachinstruction in parallel across the multiple data elements of eachoperand. For example, in response to an add instruction the executionunit performs a simultaneous add operation across each color channelrepresenting a texture element or picture element. By default, theexecution unit performs each instruction across all data channels of theoperands. In some embodiments, instruction control field 714 enablescontrol over certain execution options, such as channels selection(e.g., predication) and data channel order (e.g., swizzle). Forinstructions in the 128-bit instruction format 710 an exec-size field716 limits the number of data channels that will be executed inparallel. In some embodiments, exec-size field 716 is not available foruse in the 64-bit compact instruction format 730.

Some execution unit instructions have up to three operands including twosource operands, src0 720, src1 722, and one destination 718. In someembodiments, the execution units support dual destination instructions,where one of the destinations is implied. Data manipulation instructionscan have a third source operand (e.g., SRC2 724), where the instructionopcode 712 determines the number of source operands. An instruction'slast source operand can be an immediate (e.g., hard-coded) value passedwith the instruction.

In some embodiments, the 128-bit instruction format 710 includes anaccess/address mode field 726 specifying, for example, whether directregister addressing mode or indirect register addressing mode is used.When direct register addressing mode is used, the register address ofone or more operands is directly provided by bits in the instruction.

In some embodiments, the 128-bit instruction format 710 includes anaccess/address mode field 726, which specifies an address mode and/or anaccess mode for the instruction. In one embodiment the access mode isused to define a data access alignment for the instruction. Someembodiments support access modes including a 16-byte aligned access modeand a 1-byte aligned access mode, where the byte alignment of the accessmode determines the access alignment of the instruction operands. Forexample, when in a first mode, the instruction may use byte-alignedaddressing for source and destination operands and when in a secondmode, the instruction may use 16-byte-aligned addressing for all sourceand destination operands.

In one embodiment, the address mode portion of the access/address modefield 726 determines whether the instruction is to use direct orindirect addressing. When direct register addressing mode is used bitsin the instruction directly provide the register address of one or moreoperands. When indirect register addressing mode is used, the registeraddress of one or more operands may be computed based on an addressregister value and an address immediate field in the instruction.

In some embodiments instructions are grouped based on opcode 712bit-fields to simplify Opcode decode 740. For an 8-bit opcode, bits 4,5, and 6 allow the execution unit to determine the type of opcode. Theprecise opcode grouping shown is merely an example. In some embodiments,a move and logic opcode group 742 includes data movement and logicinstructions (e.g., move (mov), compare (cmp)). In some embodiments,move and logic group 742 shares the five most significant bits (MSB),where move (mov) instructions are in the form of 0000xxxxb and logicinstructions are in the form of 0001xxxxb. A flow control instructiongroup 744 (e.g., call, jump (jmp)) includes instructions in the form of0010xxxxb (e.g., 0x20). A miscellaneous instruction group 746 includes amix of instructions, including synchronization instructions (e.g., wait,send) in the form of 0011xxxxb (e.g., 0x30). A parallel math instructiongroup 748 includes component-wise arithmetic instructions (e.g., add,multiply (mul)) in the form of 0100xxxxb (e.g., 0x40). The parallel mathgroup 748 performs the arithmetic operations in parallel across datachannels. The vector math group 750 includes arithmetic instructions(e.g., dp4) in the form of 0101xxxxb (e.g., 0x50). The vector math groupperforms arithmetic such as dot product calculations on vector operands.

Graphics Pipeline

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of another embodiment of a graphics processor800. Elements of FIG. 8 having the same reference numbers (or names) asthe elements of any other figure herein can operate or function in anymanner similar to that described elsewhere herein, but are not limitedto such.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 800 includes a graphics pipeline820, a media pipeline 830, a display engine 840, thread execution logic850, and a render output pipeline 870. In some embodiments, graphicsprocessor 800 is a graphics processor within a multi-core processingsystem that includes one or more general purpose processing cores. Thegraphics processor is controlled by register writes to one or morecontrol registers (not shown) or via commands issued to graphicsprocessor 800 via a ring interconnect 802. In some embodiments, ringinterconnect 802 couples graphics processor 800 to other processingcomponents, such as other graphics processors or general-purposeprocessors. Commands from ring interconnect 802 are interpreted by acommand streamer 803, which supplies instructions to individualcomponents of graphics pipeline 820 or media pipeline 830.

In some embodiments, command streamer 803 directs the operation of avertex fetcher 805 that reads vertex data from memory and executesvertex-processing commands provided by command streamer 803. In someembodiments, vertex fetcher 805 provides vertex data to a vertex shader807, which performs coordinate space transformation and lightingoperations to each vertex. In some embodiments, vertex fetcher 805 andvertex shader 807 execute vertex-processing instructions by dispatchingexecution threads to execution units 852A-852B via a thread dispatcher831.

In some embodiments, execution units 852A-852B are an array of vectorprocessors having an instruction set for performing graphics and mediaoperations. In some embodiments, execution units 852A-852B have anattached L1 cache 851 that is specific for each array or shared betweenthe arrays. The cache can be configured as a data cache, an instructioncache, or a single cache that is partitioned to contain data andinstructions in different partitions.

In some embodiments, graphics pipeline 820 includes tessellationcomponents to perform hardware-accelerated tessellation of 3D objects.In some embodiments, a programmable hull shader 811 configures thetessellation operations. A programmable domain shader 817 providesback-end evaluation of tessellation output. A tessellator 813 operatesat the direction of hull shader 811 and contains special purpose logicto generate a set of detailed geometric objects based on a coarsegeometric model that is provided as input to graphics pipeline 820. Insome embodiments, if tessellation is not used, tessellation components(e.g., hull shader 811, tessellator 813, and domain shader 817) can bebypassed.

In some embodiments, complete geometric objects can be processed by ageometry shader 819 via one or more threads dispatched to executionunits 852A-852B, or can proceed directly to the clipper 829. In someembodiments, the geometry shader operates on entire geometric objects,rather than vertices or patches of vertices as in previous stages of thegraphics pipeline. If the tessellation is disabled the geometry shader819 receives input from the vertex shader 807. In some embodiments,geometry shader 819 is programmable by a geometry shader program toperform geometry tessellation if the tessellation units are disabled.

Before rasterization, a clipper 829 processes vertex data. The clipper829 may be a fixed function clipper or a programmable clipper havingclipping and geometry shader functions. In some embodiments, arasterizer and depth test component 873 in the render output pipeline870 dispatches pixel shaders to convert the geometric objects into theirper pixel representations. In some embodiments, pixel shader logic isincluded in thread execution logic 850. In some embodiments, anapplication can bypass the rasterizer and depth test component 873 andaccess un-rasterized vertex data via a stream out unit 823.

The graphics processor 800 has an interconnect bus, interconnect fabric,or some other interconnect mechanism that allows data and messagepassing amongst the major components of the processor. In someembodiments, execution units 852A-852B and associated cache(s) 851,texture and media sampler 854, and texture/sampler cache 858interconnect via a data port 856 to perform memory access andcommunicate with render output pipeline components of the processor. Insome embodiments, sampler 854, caches 851, 858 and execution units852A-852B each have separate memory access paths.

In some embodiments, render output pipeline 870 contains a rasterizerand depth test component 873 that converts vertex-based objects into anassociated pixel-based representation. In some embodiments, therasterizer logic includes a windower/masker unit to perform fixedfunction triangle and line rasterization. An associated render cache 878and depth cache 879 are also available in some embodiments. A pixeloperations component 877 performs pixel-based operations on the data,though in some instances, pixel operations associated with 2D operations(e.g. bit block image transfers with blending) are performed by the 2Dengine 841, or substituted at display time by the display controller 843using overlay display planes. In some embodiments, a shared L3 cache 875is available to all graphics components, allowing the sharing of datawithout the use of main system memory.

In some embodiments, graphics processor media pipeline 830 includes amedia engine 837 and a video front end 834. In some embodiments, videofront end 834 receives pipeline commands from the command streamer 803.In some embodiments, media pipeline 830 includes a separate commandstreamer. In some embodiments, video front-end 834 processes mediacommands before sending the command to the media engine 837. In someembodiments, media engine 837 includes thread spawning functionality tospawn threads for dispatch to thread execution logic 850 via threaddispatcher 831.

In some embodiments, graphics processor 800 includes a display engine840. In some embodiments, display engine 840 is external to processor800 and couples with the graphics processor via the ring interconnect802, or some other interconnect bus or fabric. In some embodiments,display engine 840 includes a 2D engine 841 and a display controller843. In some embodiments, display engine 840 contains special purposelogic capable of operating independently of the 3D pipeline. In someembodiments, display controller 843 couples with a display device (notshown), which may be a system integrated display device, as in a laptopcomputer, or an external display device attached via a display deviceconnector.

In some embodiments, graphics pipeline 820 and media pipeline 830 areconfigurable to perform operations based on multiple graphics and mediaprogramming interfaces and are not specific to any one applicationprogramming interface (API). In some embodiments, driver software forthe graphics processor translates API calls that are specific to aparticular graphics or media library into commands that can be processedby the graphics processor. In some embodiments, support is provided forthe Open Graphics Library (OpenGL), Open Computing Language (OpenCL),and/or Vulkan graphics and compute API, all from the Khronos Group. Insome embodiments, support may also be provided for the Direct3D libraryfrom the Microsoft Corporation. In some embodiments, a combination ofthese libraries may be supported. Support may also be provided for theOpen Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV). A future API with acompatible 3D pipeline would also be supported if a mapping can be madefrom the pipeline of the future API to the pipeline of the graphicsprocessor.

Graphics Pipeline Programming

FIG. 9A is a block diagram illustrating a graphics processor commandformat 900 according to some embodiments. FIG. 9B is a block diagramillustrating a graphics processor command sequence 910 according to anembodiment. The solid lined boxes in FIG. 9A illustrate the componentsthat are generally included in a graphics command while the dashed linesinclude components that are optional or that are only included in asub-set of the graphics commands. The exemplary graphics processorcommand format 900 of FIG. 9A includes data fields to identify a targetclient 902 of the command, a command operation code (opcode) 904, andthe relevant data 906 for the command. A sub-opcode 905 and a commandsize 908 are also included in some commands.

In some embodiments, client 902 specifies the client unit of thegraphics device that processes the command data. In some embodiments, agraphics processor command parser examines the client field of eachcommand to condition the further processing of the command and route thecommand data to the appropriate client unit. In some embodiments, thegraphics processor client units include a memory interface unit, arender unit, a 2D unit, a 3D unit, and a media unit. Each client unithas a corresponding processing pipeline that processes the commands.Once the command is received by the client unit, the client unit readsthe opcode 904 and, if present, sub-opcode 905 to determine theoperation to perform. The client unit performs the command usinginformation in data field 906. For some commands an explicit commandsize 908 is expected to specify the size of the command. In someembodiments, the command parser automatically determines the size of atleast some of the commands based on the command opcode. In someembodiments commands are aligned via multiples of a double word.

The flow diagram in FIG. 9B shows an exemplary graphics processorcommand sequence 910. In some embodiments, software or firmware of adata processing system that features an embodiment of a graphicsprocessor uses a version of the command sequence shown to set up,execute, and terminate a set of graphics operations. A sample commandsequence is shown and described for purposes of example only asembodiments are not limited to these specific commands or to thiscommand sequence. Moreover, the commands may be issued as batch ofcommands in a command sequence, such that the graphics processor willprocess the sequence of commands in at least partially concurrence.

In some embodiments, the graphics processor command sequence 910 maybegin with a pipeline flush command 912 to cause any active graphicspipeline to complete the currently pending commands for the pipeline. Insome embodiments, the 3D pipeline 922 and the media pipeline 924 do notoperate concurrently. The pipeline flush is performed to cause theactive graphics pipeline to complete any pending commands. In responseto a pipeline flush, the command parser for the graphics processor willpause command processing until the active drawing engines completepending operations and the relevant read caches are invalidated.Optionally, any data in the render cache that is marked ‘dirty’ can beflushed to memory. In some embodiments, pipeline flush command 912 canbe used for pipeline synchronization or before placing the graphicsprocessor into a low power state.

In some embodiments, a pipeline select command 913 is used when acommand sequence requires the graphics processor to explicitly switchbetween pipelines. In some embodiments, a pipeline select command 913 isrequired only once within an execution context before issuing pipelinecommands unless the context is to issue commands for both pipelines. Insome embodiments, a pipeline flush command 912 is required immediatelybefore a pipeline switch via the pipeline select command 913.

In some embodiments, a pipeline control command 914 configures agraphics pipeline for operation and is used to program the 3D pipeline922 and the media pipeline 924. In some embodiments, pipeline controlcommand 914 configures the pipeline state for the active pipeline. Inone embodiment, the pipeline control command 914 is used for pipelinesynchronization and to clear data from one or more cache memories withinthe active pipeline before processing a batch of commands.

In some embodiments, commands for the return buffer state 916 are usedto configure a set of return buffers for the respective pipelines towrite data. Some pipeline operations require the allocation, selection,or configuration of one or more return buffers into which the operationswrite intermediate data during processing. In some embodiments, thegraphics processor also uses one or more return buffers to store outputdata and to perform cross thread communication. In some embodiments,configuring the return buffer state 916 includes selecting the size andnumber of return buffers to use for a set of pipeline operations.

The remaining commands in the command sequence differ based on theactive pipeline for operations. Based on a pipeline determination 920,the command sequence is tailored to the 3D pipeline 922 beginning withthe 3D pipeline state 930 or the media pipeline 924 beginning at themedia pipeline state 940.

The commands to configure the 3D pipeline state 930 include 3D statesetting commands for vertex buffer state, vertex element state, constantcolor state, depth buffer state, and other state variables that are tobe configured before 3D primitive commands are processed. The values ofthese commands are determined at least in part based on the particular3D API in use. In some embodiments, 3D pipeline state 930 commands arealso able to selectively disable or bypass certain pipeline elements ifthose elements will not be used.

In some embodiments, 3D primitive 932 command is used to submit 3Dprimitives to be processed by the 3D pipeline. Commands and associatedparameters that are passed to the graphics processor via the 3Dprimitive 932 command are forwarded to the vertex fetch function in thegraphics pipeline. The vertex fetch function uses the 3D primitive 932command data to generate vertex data structures. The vertex datastructures are stored in one or more return buffers. In someembodiments, 3D primitive 932 command is used to perform vertexoperations on 3D primitives via vertex shaders. To process vertexshaders, 3D pipeline 922 dispatches shader execution threads to graphicsprocessor execution units.

In some embodiments, 3D pipeline 922 is triggered via an execute 934command or event. In some embodiments, a register write triggers commandexecution. In some embodiments execution is triggered via a ‘go’ or‘kick’ command in the command sequence. In one embodiment, commandexecution is triggered using a pipeline synchronization command to flushthe command sequence through the graphics pipeline. The 3D pipeline willperform geometry processing for the 3D primitives. Once operations arecomplete, the resulting geometric objects are rasterized and the pixelengine colors the resulting pixels. Additional commands to control pixelshading and pixel back end operations may also be included for thoseoperations.

In some embodiments, the graphics processor command sequence 910 followsthe media pipeline 924 path when performing media operations. Ingeneral, the specific use and manner of programming for the mediapipeline 924 depends on the media or compute operations to be performed.Specific media decode operations may be offloaded to the media pipelineduring media decode. In some embodiments, the media pipeline can also bebypassed and media decode can be performed in whole or in part usingresources provided by one or more general purpose processing cores. Inone embodiment, the media pipeline also includes elements forgeneral-purpose graphics processor unit (GPGPU) operations, where thegraphics processor is used to perform SIMD vector operations usingcomputational shader programs that are not explicitly related to therendering of graphics primitives.

In some embodiments, media pipeline 924 is configured in a similarmanner as the 3D pipeline 922. A set of commands to configure the mediapipeline state 940 are dispatched or placed into a command queue beforethe media object commands 942. In some embodiments, commands for themedia pipeline state 940 include data to configure the media pipelineelements that will be used to process the media objects. This includesdata to configure the video decode and video encode logic within themedia pipeline, such as encode or decode format. In some embodiments,commands for the media pipeline state 940 also support the use of one ormore pointers to “indirect” state elements that contain a batch of statesettings.

In some embodiments, media object commands 942 supply pointers to mediaobjects for processing by the media pipeline. The media objects includememory buffers containing video data to be processed. In someembodiments, all media pipeline states must be valid before issuing amedia object command 942. Once the pipeline state is configured andmedia object commands 942 are queued, the media pipeline 924 istriggered via an execute command 944 or an equivalent execute event(e.g., register write). Output from media pipeline 924 may then be postprocessed by operations provided by the 3D pipeline 922 or the mediapipeline 924. In some embodiments, GPGPU operations are configured andexecuted in a similar manner as media operations.

Graphics Software Architecture

FIG. 10 illustrates exemplary graphics software architecture for a dataprocessing system 1000 according to some embodiments. In someembodiments, software architecture includes a 3D graphics application1010, an operating system 1020, and at least one processor 1030. In someembodiments, processor 1030 includes a graphics processor 1032 and oneor more general-purpose processor core(s) 1034. The graphics application1010 and operating system 1020 each execute in the system memory 1050 ofthe data processing system.

In some embodiments, 3D graphics application 1010 contains one or moreshader programs including shader instructions 1012. The shader languageinstructions may be in a high-level shader language, such as the HighLevel Shader Language (HLSL) or the OpenGL Shader Language (GLSL). Theapplication also includes executable instructions 1014 in a machinelanguage suitable for execution by the general-purpose processor core1034. The application also includes graphics objects 1016 defined byvertex data.

In some embodiments, operating system 1020 is a Microsoft® Windows®operating system from the Microsoft Corporation, a proprietary UNIX-likeoperating system, or an open source UNIX-like operating system using avariant of the Linux kernel. The operating system 1020 can support agraphics API 1022 such as the Direct3D API, the OpenGL API, or theVulkan API. When the Direct3D API is in use, the operating system 1020uses a front-end shader compiler 1024 to compile any shader instructions1012 in HLSL into a lower-level shader language. The compilation may bea just-in-time (JIT) compilation or the application can perform shaderpre-compilation. In some embodiments, high-level shaders are compiledinto low-level shaders during the compilation of the 3D graphicsapplication 1010. In some embodiments, the shader instructions 1012 areprovided in an intermediate form, such as a version of the StandardPortable Intermediate Representation (SPIR) used by the Vulkan API.

In some embodiments, user mode graphics driver 1026 contains a back-endshader compiler 1027 to convert the shader instructions 1012 into ahardware specific representation. When the OpenGL API is in use, shaderinstructions 1012 in the GLSL high-level language are passed to a usermode graphics driver 1026 for compilation. In some embodiments, usermode graphics driver 1026 uses operating system kernel mode functions1028 to communicate with a kernel mode graphics driver 1029. In someembodiments, kernel mode graphics driver 1029 communicates with graphicsprocessor 1032 to dispatch commands and instructions.

IP Core Implementations

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented byrepresentative code stored on a machine-readable medium which representsand/or defines logic within an integrated circuit such as a processor.For example, the machine-readable medium may include instructions whichrepresent various logic within the processor. When read by a machine,the instructions may cause the machine to fabricate the logic to performthe techniques described herein. Such representations, known as “IPcores,” are reusable units of logic for an integrated circuit that maybe stored on a tangible, machine-readable medium as a hardware modelthat describes the structure of the integrated circuit. The hardwaremodel may be supplied to various customers or manufacturing facilities,which load the hardware model on fabrication machines that manufacturethe integrated circuit. The integrated circuit may be fabricated suchthat the circuit performs operations described in association with anyof the embodiments described herein.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram illustrating an IP core development system1100 that may be used to manufacture an integrated circuit to performoperations according to an embodiment. The IP core development system1100 may be used to generate modular, re-usable designs that can beincorporated into a larger design or used to construct an entireintegrated circuit (e.g., an SOC integrated circuit). A design facility1130 can generate a software simulation 1110 of an IP core design in ahigh level programming language (e.g., C/C++). The software simulation1110 can be used to design, test, and verify the behavior of the IP coreusing a simulation model 1112. The simulation model 1112 may includefunctional, behavioral, and/or timing simulations. A register transferlevel (RTL) design 1115 can then be created or synthesized from thesimulation model 1112. The RTL design 1115 is an abstraction of thebehavior of the integrated circuit that models the flow of digitalsignals between hardware registers, including the associated logicperformed using the modeled digital signals. In addition to an RTLdesign 1115, lower-level designs at the logic level or transistor levelmay also be created, designed, or synthesized. Thus, the particulardetails of the initial design and simulation may vary.

The RTL design 1115 or equivalent may be further synthesized by thedesign facility into a hardware model 1120, which may be in a hardwaredescription language (HDL), or some other representation of physicaldesign data. The HDL may be further simulated or tested to verify the IPcore design. The IP core design can be stored for delivery to a 3rdparty fabrication facility 1165 using non-volatile memory 1140 (e.g.,hard disk, flash memory, or any non-volatile storage medium).Alternatively, the IP core design may be transmitted (e.g., via theInternet) over a wired connection 1150 or wireless connection 1160. Thefabrication facility 1165 may then fabricate an integrated circuit thatis based at least in part on the IP core design. The fabricatedintegrated circuit can be configured to perform operations in accordancewith at least one embodiment described herein.

Exemplary System on a Chip Integrated Circuit

FIGS. 12-14 illustrate exemplary integrated circuits and associatedgraphics processors that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores,according to various embodiments described herein. In addition to whatis illustrated, other logic and circuits may be included, includingadditional graphics processors/cores, peripheral interface controllers,or general purpose processor cores.

FIG. 12 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system on a chipintegrated circuit 1200 that may be fabricated using one or more IPcores, according to an embodiment. Exemplary integrated circuit 1200includes one or more application processor(s) 1205 (e.g., CPUs), atleast one graphics processor 1210, and may additionally include an imageprocessor 1215 and/or a video processor 1220, any of which may be amodular IP core from the same or multiple different design facilities.Integrated circuit 1200 includes peripheral or bus logic including a USBcontroller 1225, UART controller 1230, an SPI/SDIO controller 1235, andan I2S/I2C controller 1240. Additionally, the integrated circuit caninclude a display device 1245 coupled to one or more of ahigh-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) controller 1250 and a mobileindustry processor interface (MIPI) display interface 1255. Storage maybe provided by a flash memory subsystem 1260 including flash memory anda flash memory controller. Memory interface may be provided via a memorycontroller 1265 for access to SDRAM or SRAM memory devices. Someintegrated circuits additionally include an embedded security engine1270.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary graphics processor1310 of a system on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricatedusing one or more IP cores, according to an embodiment. Graphicsprocessor 1310 can be a variant of the graphics processor 1210 of FIG.12. Graphics processor 1310 includes a vertex processor 1305 and one ormore fragment processor(s) 1315A 1315N (e.g., 1315A, 13158, 1315C,1315D, through 1315N-1, and 1315N). Graphics processor 1310 can executedifferent shader programs via separate logic, such that the vertexprocessor 1305 is optimized to execute operations for vertex shaderprograms, while the one or more fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315Nexecute fragment (e.g., pixel) shading operations for fragment or pixelshader programs. The vertex processor 1305 performs the vertexprocessing stage of the 3D graphics pipeline and generates primitivesand vertex data. The fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315N use the primitiveand vertex data generated by the vertex processor 1305 to produce aframebuffer that is displayed on a display device. In one embodiment,the fragment processor(s) 1315A-1315N are optimized to execute fragmentshader programs as provided for in the OpenGL API, which may be used toperform similar operations as a pixel shader program as provided for inthe Direct 3D API.

Graphics processor 1310 additionally includes one or more memorymanagement units (MMUs) 1320A-1320B, cache(s) 1325A-1325B, and circuitinterconnect(s) 1330A-1330B. The one or more MMU(s) 1320A-1320B providefor virtual to physical address mapping for graphics processor 1310,including for the vertex processor 1305 and/or fragment processor(s)1315A-1315N, which may reference vertex or image/texture data stored inmemory, in addition to vertex or image/texture data stored in the one ormore cache(s) 1325A-1325B. In one embodiment the one or more MMU(s)1320A-1320B may be synchronized with other MMUs within the system,including one or more MMUs associated with the one or more applicationprocessor(s) 1205, image processor 1215, and/or video processor 1220 ofFIG. 12, such that each processor 1205-1220 can participate in a sharedor unified virtual memory system. The one or more circuitinterconnect(s) 1330A-1330B enable graphics processor 1310 to interfacewith other IP cores within the SoC, either via an internal bus of theSoC or via a direct connection, according to embodiments.

FIG. 14 is a block diagram illustrating an additional exemplary graphicsprocessor 1410 of a system on a chip integrated circuit that may befabricated using one or more IP cores, according to an embodiment.Graphics processor 1410 can be a variant of the graphics processor 1210of FIG. 12. Graphics processor 1410 includes the one or more MMU(s)1320A-1320B, cache(s) 1325A-1325B, and circuit interconnect(s)1330A-1330B of the integrated circuit 1300 of FIG. 13.

Graphics processor 1410 includes one or more shader core(s) 1415A-1415N(e.g., 1415A, 1415B, 1415C, 1415D, 1415E, 1415F, through 1315N-1, and1315N), which provides for a unified shader core architecture in which asingle core or type or core can execute all types of programmable shadercode, including shader program code to implement vertex shaders,fragment shaders, and/or compute shaders. The exact number of shadercores present can vary among embodiments and implementations.Additionally, graphics processor 1410 includes an inter-core taskmanager 1405, which acts as a thread dispatcher to dispatch executionthreads to one or more shader core(s) 1415A-1415N and a tiling unit 1418to accelerate tiling operations for tile-based rendering, in whichrendering operations for a scene are subdivided in image space, forexample to exploit local spatial coherence within a scene or to optimizeuse of internal caches.

Exemplary Graphics Virtualization Architectures

Some embodiments of the invention are implemented on a platformutilizing full graphics processor unit (GPU) virtualization. As such, anoverview of the GPU virtualization techniques employed in one embodimentof the invention is provided below, followed by a detailed descriptionof an apparatus and method for pattern-driven page table shadowing.

One embodiment of the invention employs a full GPU virtualizationenvironment running a native graphics driver in the guest, and mediatedpass-through that achieves both good performance, scalability, andsecure isolation among guests. This embodiment presents a virtualfull-fledged GPU to each virtual machine (VM) which can directly accessperformance-critical resources without intervention from the hypervisorin most cases, while privileged operations from the guest aretrap-and-emulated at minimal cost. In one embodiment, a virtual GPU(vGPU), with full GPU features, is presented to each VM. VMs candirectly access performance-critical resources, without interventionfrom the hypervisor in most cases, while privileged operations from theguest are trap-and-emulated to provide secure isolation among VMs. ThevGPU context is switched per quantum, to share the physical GPU amongmultiple VMs.

FIG. 15 illustrates a high level system architecture on whichembodiments of the invention may be implemented which includes agraphics processing unit (GPU) 1500, a central processing unit (CPU)1520, and a system memory 1510 shared between the GPU 1500 and the CPU1520. A render engine 1502 fetches GPU commands from a command buffer1512 in system memory 1510, to accelerate graphics rendering usingvarious different features. The display engine 1504 fetches pixel datafrom the frame buffer 1514 and then sends the pixel data to externalmonitors for display.

Certain architectures use system memory 1510 as graphics memory, whileother GPUs may use on-die memory. System memory 1510 may be mapped intomultiple virtual address spaces by GPU page tables 1506. A 2 GB globalvirtual address space, called global graphics memory, accessible fromboth the GPU 1500 and CPU 1520, is mapped through global page tables.Local graphics memory spaces are supported in the form of multiple 2 GBlocal virtual address spaces, but are only limited to access from therender engine 1502, through local page tables. Global graphics memory ismostly the frame buffer 1514, but also serves as the command buffer1512. Large data accesses are made to local graphics memory whenhardware acceleration is in progress. Similar page table mechanisms areemployed by GPUs with on-die memory.

In one embodiment, the CPU 1520 programs the GPU 1500 throughGPU-specific commands, shown in FIG. 15, in a producer-consumer model.The graphics driver programs GPU commands into the command buffer 1512,including a primary buffer and a batch buffer, according to high levelprogramming APIs like OpenGL and DirectX. The GPU 1500 then fetches andexecutes the commands. The primary buffer, a ring buffer, may chainother batch buffers together. The terms “primary buffer” and “ringbuffer” are used interchangeably hereafter. The batch buffer is used toconvey the majority of the commands (up to ˜98%) per programming model.A register tuple (head, tail) is used to control the ring buffer. In oneembodiment, the CPU 1520 submits the commands to the GPU 1500 byupdating the tail, while the GPU 1500 fetches commands from head, andthen notifies the CPU 1520 by updating the head, after the commands havefinished execution.

As mentioned, one embodiment of the invention is implemented in a fullGPU virtualization platform with mediated pass-through. As such, everyVM is presented with a full-fledged GPU to run a native graphics driverinside a VM. The challenge, however, is significant in three ways: (1)complexity in virtualizing an entire sophisticated modern GPU, (2)performance due to multiple VMs sharing the GPU, and (3) secureisolation among the VMs without any compromise.

FIG. 16 illustrates a GPU virtualization architecture in accordance withone embodiment of the invention which includes a hypervisor 1610 runningon a GPU 1600, a privileged virtual machine (VM) 1620 and one or moreuser VMs 1631-1632. A virtualization stub module 1611 running in thehypervisor 1610 extends memory management to include extended pagetables (EPT) 1614 for the user VMs 1631-1632 and a privileged virtualmemory management unit (PVMMU) 1612 for the privileged VM 1620, toimplement the policies of trap and pass-through. In one embodiment, eachVM 1620, 1631-1632 runs the native graphics driver 1628 which candirectly access the performance-critical resources of the frame bufferand the command buffer, with resource partitioning as described below.To protect privileged resources, that is, the I/O registers and PTEs,corresponding accesses from the graphics drivers 1628 in user VMs1631-1632 and the privileged VM 1620, are trapped and forwarded to thevirtualization mediator 1622 in the privileged VM 1620 for emulation. Inone embodiment, the virtualization mediator 1622 uses hypercalls toaccess the physical GPU 1600 as illustrated.

In addition, in one embodiment, the virtualization mediator 1622implements a GPU scheduler 1626, which runs concurrently with the CPUscheduler 1616 in the hypervisor 1610, to share the physical GPU 1600among the VMs 1631-1632. One embodiment uses the physical GPU 1600 todirectly execute all the commands submitted from a VM, so it avoids thecomplexity of emulating the render engine, which is the most complexpart within the GPU. In the meantime, the resource pass-through of boththe frame buffer and command buffer minimizes the hypervisor's 1610intervention on CPU accesses, while the GPU scheduler 1626 guaranteesevery VM a quantum for direct GPU execution. Consequently, theillustrated embodiment achieves good performance when sharing the GPUamong multiple VMs.

In one embodiment, the virtualization stub 1611 selectively traps orpasses-through guest access of certain GPU resources. The virtualizationstub 1611 manipulates the EPT 1614 entries to selectively present orhide a specific address range to user VMs 1631-1632, while uses areserved bit of PTEs in the PVMMU 1612 for the privileged VM 1620, toselectively trap or pass-through guest accesses to a specific addressrange. In both cases, the peripheral input/output (PIO) accesses aretrapped. All the trapped accesses are forwarded to the virtualizationmediator 1622 for emulation while the virtualization mediator 1611 useshypercalls to access the physical GPU 1600.

As mentioned, in one embodiment, the virtualization mediator 1622emulates virtual GPUs (vGPUs) 1624 for privileged resource accesses, andconducts context switches amongst the vGPUs 1624. In the meantime, theprivileged VM 1620 graphics driver 1628 is used to initialize thephysical device and to manage power. One embodiment takes a flexiblerelease model, by implementing the virtualization mediator 1622 as akernel module in the privileged VM 1620, to ease the binding between thevirtualization mediator 1622 and the hypervisor 1610.

A split CPU/GPU scheduling mechanism is implemented via the CPUscheduler 1616 and GPU scheduler 1626. This is done because of the costof a GPU context switch may be over 1000 times the cost of a CPU contextswitch (e.g., ˜700 us vs. ˜300 ns). In addition, the number of the CPUcores likely differs from the number of the GPU cores in a computersystem. Consequently, in one embodiment, a GPU scheduler 1626 isimplemented separately from the existing CPU scheduler 1616. The splitscheduling mechanism leads to the requirement of concurrent accesses tothe resources from both the CPU and the GPU. For example, while the CPUis accessing the graphics memory of VM1 1631, the GPU may be accessingthe graphics memory of VM2 1632, concurrently.

As discussed above, in one embodiment, a native graphics driver 1628 isexecuted inside each VM 1620, 1631-1632, which directly accesses aportion of the performance-critical resources, with privilegedoperations emulated by the virtualization mediator 1622. The splitscheduling mechanism leads to the resource partitioning design describedbelow. To support resource partitioning better, one embodiment reservesa Memory-Mapped I/O (MMIO) register window to convey the resourcepartitioning information to the VM.

In one embodiment, the location and definition of virt_info has beenpushed to the hardware specification as a virtualization extension sothe graphics driver 1628 handles the extension natively, and future GPUgenerations follow the specification for backward compatibility.

While illustrated as a separate component in FIG. 16, in one embodiment,the privileged VM 1620 including the virtualization mediator 1622 (andits vGPU instances 1624 and GPU scheduler 1626) is implemented as amodule within the hypervisor 1610.

In one embodiment, the virtualization mediator 1622 manages vGPUs 1624of all VMs, by trap-and-emulating the privileged operations. Thevirtualization mediator 1622 handles the physical GPU interrupts, andmay generate virtual interrupts to the designated VMs 1631-1632. Forexample, a physical completion interrupt of command execution maytrigger a virtual completion interrupt, delivered to the renderingowner. The idea of emulating a vGPU instance per semantics is simple;however, the implementation involves a large engineering effort and adeep understanding of the GPU 1600. For example, approximately 700 I/Oregisters may be accessed by certain graphics drivers.

In one embodiment, the GPU scheduler 1626 implements a coarse-grainquality of service (QoS) policy. A particular time quantum may beselected as a time slice for each VM 1631-1632 to share the GPU 1600resources. For example, in one embodiment, a time quantum of 16 ms isselected as the scheduling time slice, because this value results in alow human perceptibility to image changes. Such a relatively largequantum is also selected because the cost of the GPU context switch isover 1000× that of the CPU context switch, so it can't be as small asthe time slice in the CPU scheduler 1616. The commands from a VM1631-1632 are submitted to the GPU 1600 continuously, until the guest/VMruns out of its time-slice. In one embodiment, the GPU scheduler 1626waits for the guest ring buffer to become idle before switching, becausemost GPUs today are non-preemptive, which may impact fairness. Tominimize the wait overhead, a coarse-grain flow control mechanism may beimplemented, by tracking the command submission to guarantee the piledcommands, at any time, are within a certain limit. Therefore, the timedrift between the allocated time slice and the execution time isrelatively small, compared to the large quantum, so a coarse-grain QoSpolicy is achieved.

In one embodiment, on a render context switch, the internal pipelinestate and I/O register states are saved and restored, and a cache/TLBflush is performed, when switching the render engine among vGPUs 1624.The internal pipeline state is invisible to the CPU, but can be savedand restored through GPU commands. Saving/restoring I/O register statescan be achieved through reads/writes to a list of the registers in therender context. Internal caches and Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLB)included in modern GPUs to accelerate data accesses and addresstranslations, must be flushed using commands at the render contextswitch, to guarantee isolation and correctness. The steps used to switcha context in one embodiment are: 1) save current I/O states, 2) flushthe current context, 3) use the additional commands to save the currentcontext, 4) use the additional commands to restore the new context, and5) restore I/O state of the new context.

As mentioned, one embodiment uses a dedicated ring buffer to carry theadditional GPU commands. The (audited) guest ring buffer may be reusedfor performance, but it is not safe to directly insert the commands intothe guest ring buffer, because the CPU may continue to queue morecommands, leading to overwritten content. To avoid a race condition, oneembodiment switches from the guest ring buffer to its own dedicated ringbuffer. At the end of the context switch, this embodiment switches fromthe dedicated ring buffer to the guest ring buffer of the new VM.

One embodiment reuses the privileged VM 1620 graphics driver toinitialize the display engine, and then manages the display engine toshow different VM frame buffers.

When two vGPUs 1624 have the same resolution, only the frame bufferlocations are switched. For different resolutions, the privileged VM mayuse a hardware scalar, a common feature in modern GPUs, to scale theresolution up and down automatically. Both techniques take meremilliseconds. In many cases, display management may not be needed suchas when the VM is not shown on the physical display (e.g., when it ishosted on the remote servers).

As illustrated in FIG. 16, one embodiment passes through the accesses tothe frame buffer and command buffer to accelerate performance-criticaloperations from a VM 1631-1632. For the global graphics memory space, 2GB in size, graphics memory resource partitioning and address spaceballooning techniques may be employed. For the local graphics memoryspaces, each also with a size of 2 GB, a per-VM local graphics memorymay be implemented through the render context switch, due to localgraphics memory being accessible only by the GPU 1600.

As mentioned, one embodiment partitions the global graphics memory amongVMs 1631-1632. As explained above, a split CPU/GPU scheduling mechanismrequires that the global graphics memory of different VMs can beaccessed simultaneously by the CPU and the GPU, so each VM must bepresented at any time with its own resources, leading to the resourcepartitioning approach for global graphics memory.

FIG. 17 illustrates additional details for one embodiment of a graphicsvirtualization architecture 1700 which includes multiple VMs, e.g., VM1730 and VM 1740, managed by hypervisor 1710, including access to a fullarray of GPU features in a GPU 1720. In various embodiments, hypervisor1710 may enable VM 1730 or VM 1740 to utilize graphics memory and otherGPU resources for GPU virtualization. One or more virtual GPUs (vGPUs),e.g., vGPUs 1760A and 1760B, may access the full functionality providedby GPU 1720 hardware based on the GPU virtualization technology. Invarious embodiments, hypervisor 1710 may track, manage resources andlifecycles of the vGPUs 1760A and 1760B as described herein.

In some embodiments, vGPUs 1760A-B may include virtual GPU devicespresented to VMs 1730, 1740 and may be used to interactive with nativeGPU drivers (e.g., as described above with respect to FIG. 16). VM 1730or VM 1740 may then access the full array of GPU features and usevirtual GPU devices in vGPUs 1760A-B to access virtual graphicsprocessors. For instance, once VM 1730 is trapped into hypervisor 1710,hypervisor 1710 may manipulate a vGPU instance, e.g., vGPU 1760A, anddetermine whether VM 1730 may access virtual GPU devices in vGPU 1760A.The vGPU context may be switched per quantum or event. In someembodiments, the context switch may happen per GPU render engine such as3D render engine 1722 or blitter render engine 1724. The periodicswitching allows multiple VMs to share a physical GPU in a manner thatis transparent to the workloads of the VMs.

GPU virtualization may take various forms. In some embodiments, VM 1730may be enabled with device pass-through, where the entire GPU 1720 ispresented to VM 1730 as if they are directly connected. Much like asingle central processing unit (CPU) core may be assigned for exclusiveuse by VM 1730, GPU 1720 may also be assigned for exclusive use by VM1730, e.g., even for a limited time. Another virtualization model istimesharing, where GPU 1720 or portions of it may be shared by multipleVMs, e.g., VM 1730 and VM 1740, in a fashion of multiplexing. Other GPUvirtualization models may also be used by apparatus 1700 in otherembodiments. In various embodiments, graphics memory associated with GPU1720 may be partitioned, and allotted to various vGPUs 1760A-B inhypervisor 1710.

In various embodiments, graphics translation tables (GTTs) may be usedby VMs or GPU 1720 to map graphics processor memory to system memory orto translate GPU virtual addresses to physical addresses. In someembodiments, hypervisor 1710 may manage graphics memory mapping viashadow GTTs, and the shadow GTTs may be held in a vGPU instance, e.g.,vGPU 1760A. In various embodiments, each VM may have a correspondingshadow GTT to hold the mapping between graphics memory addresses andphysical memory addresses, e.g., machine memory addresses undervirtualization environment. In some embodiments, the shadow GTT may beshared and maintain the mappings for multiple VMs. In some embodiments,each VM 1730 or VM 1740, may include both per-process and global GTTs.

In some embodiments, apparatus 1700 may use system memory as graphicsmemory. System memory may be mapped into multiple virtual address spacesby GPU page tables. Apparatus 1700 may support global graphics memoryspace and per-process graphics memory address space. The global graphicsmemory space may be a virtual address space, e.g., 2 GB, mapped througha global graphics translation table (GGTT). The lower portion of thisaddress space is sometimes called the aperture, accessible from both theGPU 1720 and CPU (not shown). The upper portion of this address space iscalled high graphics memory space or hidden graphics memory space, whichmay be used by GPU 1720 only. In various embodiments, shadow globalgraphics translation tables (SGGTTs) may be used by VM 1730, VM 1740,hypervisor 1710, or GPU 1720 for translating graphics memory addressesto respective system memory addresses based on a global memory addressspace.

In full GPU virtualization, a static global graphics memory spacepartitioning scheme may face a scalability problem. For example, for aglobal graphics memory space of 2 GB, the first 512 megabyte (MB)virtual address space may be reserved for aperture, and the rest ofthem, 1536 MB, may become the high (hidden) graphics memory space. Withthe static global graphics memory space partitioning scheme, each VMwith full GPU virtualization enabled may be allotted with 128 MBaperture and 384 MB high graphics memory space. Therefore, the 2 GBglobal graphics memory space may only accommodate a maximum of four VMs.

Besides the scalability problem, VMs with limited graphics memory spacemay also suffer performance degradation. Sometimes, severe performancedowngrade may be observed in some media-heavy workloads of a mediaapplication when it uses GPU media hardware acceleration extensively. Asan example, to decode one channel 1080p H.264/Advanced Video Coding(AVC) bit stream, at least 40 MB of graphics memory may be needed. Thus,for 10 channels of 1080p H264/AVC bit stream decoding, at least 400 MBof graphics memory space may be needed. Meanwhile, some graphic memoryspace may have to be set aside for surface composition/color conversion,switching display frame buffer during the decoding process, etc. In thiscase, 512 MB of graphics memory space per VM may be insufficient for aVM to run multiple video encoding or decoding.

In various embodiments, apparatus 100 may achieve GPU graphics memoryovercommitment with on-demand SGGTTs. In some embodiments, hypervisor1710 may construct SGGTTs on demand, which may include all theto-be-used translations for graphics memory virtual addresses fromdifferent GPU components' owner VMs.

In various embodiments, at least one VM managed by hypervisor 1710 maybe allotted with more than static partitioned global graphics memoryaddress space as well as memory. In some embodiments, at least one VMmanaged by hypervisor 1710 may be allotted with or able to access theentire high graphics memory address space. In some embodiments, at leastone VM managed by hypervisor 1710 may be allotted with or able to accessthe entire graphics memory address space.

Hypervisor/VMM 1710 may use command parser 1718 to detect the potentialmemory working set of a GPU rendering engine for the commands submittedby VM 1730 or VM 1740. In various embodiments, VM 1730 may haverespective command buffers (not shown) to hold commands from 3D workload1732 or media workload 1734. Similarly, VM 1740 may have respectivecommand buffers (not shown) to hold commands from 3D workload 1742 ormedia workload 1744. In other embodiments, VM 1730 or VM 1740 may haveother types of graphics workloads.

In various embodiments, command parser 1718 may scan a command from a VMand determine if the command contains memory operands. If yes, thecommand parser may read the related graphics memory space mappings,e.g., from a GTT for the VM, and then write it into a workload specificportion of the SGGTT. After the whole command buffer of a workload getsscanned, the SGGTT that holds memory address space mappings associatedwith this workload may be generated or updated. Additionally, byscanning the to-be-executed commands from VM 1730 or VM 1740, commandparser 1718 may also improve the security of GPU operations, such as bymitigating malicious operations.

In some embodiments, one SGGTT may be generated to hold translations forall workloads from all VMs. In some embodiments, one SGGTT may begenerated to hold translations for all workloads, e.g., from one VMonly. The workload specific SGGTT portion may be constructed on demandby command parser 1718 to hold the translations for a specific workload,e.g., 3D workload 1732 from VM 1730 or media workload 1744 from VM 1740.In some embodiments, command parser 1718 may insert the SGGTT into SGGTTqueue 1714 and insert the corresponding workload into workload queue1716.

In some embodiments, GPU scheduler 1712 may construct such on-demandSGGTT at the time of execution. A specific hardware engine may only usea small portion of the graphics memory address space allocated to VM1730 at the time of execution, and the GPU context switch happensinfrequently. To take advantage of such GPU features, hypervisor 1710may use the SGGTT for VM 1730 to only hold the in-execution andto-be-executed translations for various GPU components rather than theentire portion of the global graphics memory address space allotted toVM 1730.

GPU scheduler 1712 for GPU 1720 may be separated from the scheduler forCPU in apparatus 1700. To take the advantage of the hardware parallelismin some embodiments, GPU scheduler 1712 may schedule the workloadsseparately for different GPU engines, e.g., 3D render engine 1722,blitter render engine 1724, video command streamer (VCS) render engine1726, and video enhanced command streamer (VECS) render engine 1728. Forexample, VM 1730 may be 3D intensive, and 3D workload 1732 may need tobe scheduled to 3D render engine 1722 at a moment. Meanwhile, VM 1740may be media intensive, and media workload 1744 may need to be scheduledto VCS render engine 1726 and/or VECS render engine 1728. In this case,GPU scheduler 1712 may schedule 3D workload 1732 from VM 1730 and mediaworkload 1744 from VM 1740 separately.

In various embodiments, GPU scheduler 1712 may track in-executing SGGTTsused by respective render engines in GPU 1720. In this case, hypervisor1710 may retain a per-render engine SGGTT for tracking all in-executinggraphic memory working sets in respective render engines. In someembodiments, hypervisor 1710 may retain a single SGGTT for tracking allin-executing graphic memory working sets for all render engines. In someembodiments, such tracking may be based on a separate in-executing SGGTTqueue (not shown). In some embodiments, such tracking may be based onmarkings on SGGTT queue 1714, e.g., using a registry. In someembodiments, such tracking may be based on markings on workload queue1716, e.g., using a registry.

During the scheduling process, GPU scheduler 1712 may examine the SGGTTfrom SGGTT queue 1714 for a to-be-scheduled workload from workload queue1716. In some embodiments, to schedule the next VM for a particularrender engine, GPU scheduler 1712 may check whether the graphic memoryworking sets of the particular workload used by the VM for that renderengine conflict with the in-executing or to-be-executed graphic memoryworking sets by that render engine. In other embodiments, such conflictchecks may extend to check with the in-executing or to-be-executedgraphic memory working sets by all other render engines. In variousembodiments, such conflict checks may be based on the correspondingSGGTTs in SGGTT queue 1714 or based on SGGTTs retained by hypervisor1710 for tracking all in-executing graphic memory working sets inrespective render engines as discussed hereinbefore.

If there is no conflict, GPU scheduler 1712 may integrate thein-executing and to-be-executed graphic memory working sets together. Insome embodiments, a resulting SGGTT for the in-executing andto-be-executed graphic memory working sets for the particular renderengine may also be generated and stored, e.g., in SGGTT queue 1714 or inother data storage means. In some embodiments, a resulting SGGTT for thein-executing and to-be-executed graphic memory working sets for allrender engines associated with one VM may also be generated and storedif the graphics memory addresses of all these workloads do not conflictwith each other.

Before submitting a selected VM workload to GPU 1720, hypervisor 1710may write corresponding SGGTT pages into GPU 1720, e.g., to graphicstranslation tables 1750. Thus, hypervisor 1710 may enable this workloadto be executed with correct mappings in the global graphics memoryspace. In various embodiments, all such translation entries may bewritten into graphics translation tables 1750, either to lower memoryspace 1754 or upper memory space 1752. Graphics translation tables 1750may contain separate tables per VM to hold for these translation entriesin some embodiments. Graphics translation tables 1750 may also containseparate tables per render engine to hold for these translation entriesin other embodiments. In various embodiments, graphics translationtables 1750 may contain, at least, to-be-executed graphics memoryaddresses.

However, if there is a conflict determined by GPU scheduler 1712, GPUscheduler 1712 may then defer the schedule-in of that VM, and try toschedule-in another workload of the same or a different VM instead. Insome embodiments, such conflict may be detected if two or more VMs mayattempt to use a same graphics memory address, e.g., for a same renderengine or two different render engines. In some embodiments, GPUscheduler 1712 may change the scheduler policy to avoid selecting one ormore of the rendering engines, which have the potential to conflict witheach other. In some embodiments, GPU scheduler 1712 may suspend theexecution hardware engine to mitigate the conflict.

In some embodiments, memory overcommitment scheme in GPU virtualizationas discussed herein may co-exist with static global graphics memoryspace partitioning schemes. As an example, the aperture in lower memoryspace 1754 may still be used for static partition among all VMs. Thehigh graphics memory space in upper memory space 1752 may be used forthe memory overcommitment scheme. Compared to the static global graphicsmemory space partitioning scheme, memory overcommit scheme in GPUvirtualization may enable each VM to use the entire high graphics memoryspace in upper memory space 1752, which may allow some applicationsinside each VM to use greater graphic memory space for improvedperformance.

With static global graphics memory space partitioning schemes, a VMinitially claiming a large portion of memory may only use a smallportion at runtime, while other VMs may be in the status of shortage ofmemory. With memory overcommitment, a hypervisor may allocate memory forVMs on demand, and the saved memory may be used to support more VMs.With SGGTT based memory overcommitment, only graphic memory space usedby the to-be-executed workloads may be allocated at runtime, which savesgraphics memory space and supports more VMs to access GPU 1720.

Current architectures enable the hosting of GPU workloads in cloud anddata center environments. Full GPU virtualization is one of thefundamental enabling technologies used in the GPU Cloud. In full GPUvirtualization, the virtual machine monitor (VMM), particularly thevirtual GPU (vGPU) driver, traps and emulates the guest accesses toprivileged GPU resources for security and multiplexing, while passingthrough CPU accesses to performance critical resources, such as CPUaccess to graphics memory. GPU commands, once submitted, are directlyexecuted by the GPU without VMM intervention. As a result, close tonative performance is achieved.

Current systems use the system memory for GPU engines to access a GlobalGraphics Translation Table (GGTT) and/or a Per-Process GraphicsTranslation Table (PPGTT) to translate from GPU graphics memoryaddresses to system memory addresses. A shadowing mechanism may be usedfor the guest GPU page table's GGTT/PPGTT.

The VMM may use a shadow PPGTT which is synchronized to the guest PPGTT.The guest PPGTT is write-protected so that the shadow PPGTT can becontinually synchronized to the guest PPGTT by trapping and emulatingthe guest modifications of its PPGTT. Currently, the GGTT for each vGPUis shadowed and partitioned among each VM and the PPGTT is shadowed andper VM (e.g., on a per process basis). Shadowing for the GGTT page tableis straightforward since the GGTT PDE table stays in the PCI bar0 MMIOrange. However, the shadow for the PPGTT relies on write-protection ofthe Guest PPGTT page table and the traditional shadow page table is verycomplicated (and therefore buggy) and inefficient. For example, the CPUshadow page table has ˜30% performance overhead in currentarchitectures. Thus, in some of these systems an enlightened shadow pagetable is used, which modifies the guest graphics driver to cooperate inidentifying a page used for the page table page, and/or when it isreleased.

The embodiments of the invention include a memory management unit (MMU)such as an I/O memory management unit (IOMMU) to remap from a guestPPGTT-mapped GPN (guest page numbers) to HPN (host page number), withoutrelying on the low efficiency/complicated shadow PPGTT. At the sametime, one embodiment retains the global shadow GGTT page table foraddress ballooning. These techniques are referred to generally as hybridlayer of address mapping (HLAM).

An IOMMU by default cannot be used in certain mediated pass-througharchitectures since only a single second level translation is availablewith multiple VMs. One embodiment of the invention resolves thisproblem, utilizing the following techniques:

1. Using the IOMMU to conduct two layers of translation without theshadow PPGTT. In particular, in one embodiment, the GPU translates fromgraphics memory address (GM_ADDR) to GPN, and the IOMMU translates fromthe GPN to HPN, rather than the shadow PPGTT which translates from theGM_ADDR to HPN with write-protection applied to the guest PPGTT.

2. In one embodiment, the IOMMU page table is managed per VM, and isswitched (or maybe partially switched) when the vGPU is switched. Thatis, the corresponding VM's IOMMU page table is loaded when the VM/vGPUis scheduled in.

3. However, the GGTT-mapped addresses are shared in one embodiment, andthis global shadow GGTT must remain valid because the vCPU may accessthe GGTT-mapped address (e.g., such as the aperture), even when the vGPUof this VM is not scheduled in. As such, one embodiment of the inventionuses a hybrid layer of address translation which retains the globalshadow GGTT, but directly uses the guest PPGTT.

4. In one embodiment, the GPN address space is partitioned to shift theGGTT-mapped GPN address (which becomes input to the IOMMU, like the GPN)to a dedicated address range. This can be achieved by trapping andemulating the GGTT page table. In one embodiment, the GPN is modifiedfrom the GGTT with a large offset to avoid overlap with the PPGTT in theIOMMU mapping.

FIG. 18 illustrates an architecture employed in one embodiment in whichan IOMMU 1830 is enabled for device virtualization. The illustratedarchitecture includes two VMs 1801, 1811 executed on hypervisor/VMM 1820(although the underlying principles of the invention may be implementedwith any number of VMs). Each VM 1801, 1811 includes a driver 1802, 1812(e.g., a native graphics driver) which manages a guest PPGTT and GGTT1803, 1813, respectively. The illustrated IOMMU 1830 includes a HLAMmodule 1831 for implementing the hybrid layer of address mappingtechniques described herein. Notably, in this embodiment, shadow PPGTTsare not present.

In one embodiment, the entire Guest VM's (guest VM 1811 in the example)GPN to HPN translation page table 1833 is prepared in the IOMMU mapping,and each vGPU switch triggers an IOMMU page table swap. That is, as eachVM 1801, 1811 is scheduled in, its corresponding GPN to HPN translationtable 1833 is swapped in. In one embodiment, the HLAM 1831differentiates between GGTT GPNs and PPGTT GPNs and modifies the GGTTGPNs so that they do not overlap with the PPGTT GPNs when performing alookup in the translation table 1833. In particular, in one embodiment,virtual GPN generation logic 1832 converts the GGTT GPN into a virtualGPN which is then used to perform a lookup in the translation table 1833to identify the corresponding HPN.

In one embodiment, the virtual GPN is generated by shifting the GGTT bya specified (potentially large) offset to ensure that the mappedaddresses do not overlap/conflict with the PPGTT GPN. In addition, inone embodiment, since the CPU may access the GGTT mapped address (e.g.,the aperture) anytime, the global shadow GGTT will always be valid andremain in the per VM's IOMMU mapping 1833.

In one embodiment, the hybrid layer address mapping 1831 solutionpartitions the IOMMU address range into two parts: a lower part reservedfor PPGTT GPN-to-HPN translation, and an upper part reserved for GGTTvirtual GPN-to-HPN translation. Since the GPN is provided by theVM/Guest 1811, the GPN should be in the range of the guest memory size.In one embodiment, the guest PPGTT page tables are left unaltered andall GPNs from the PPGTT are directly send to the graphics translationhardware/IOMMU by the workload execution. However, in one embodiment,the MMIO read/write from guest VMs is trapped and GGTT page tablechanges are captured and altered as described herein (e.g., adding alarge offset to the GPN in order to ensure no overlap with the PPGTTmapping in the IOMMU).

Remote Virtualized Graphics Processing

In some embodiments of the invention, a server performs graphicsvirtualization, virtualizing physical GPUs and running graphicsapplications on behalf of clients. FIG. 19 illustrates one suchembodiment in which two clients 1901-1902 are connected to servers 1930over a network 1910 such as the Internet and/or a private network. Theservers 1930 implement a virtualized graphics environment in which ahypervisor 1960 allocates resources from one or more physical GPUs 1938,presenting the resources as virtual GPUs 1934-1935 to VMs/applications1932-1933. The graphics processing resources may allocated in accordancewith resource allocation policies 1961 which may cause the hypervisor1960 to allocate resources based on the requirements of the applications1932-1933 (e.g., higher performance graphics applications requiring moreresources), the user account associated with the applications 1932-1933(e.g., with certain users paying a premium for higher performance),and/or the current load on the system. The GPU resources being allocatedmay include, for example, sets of graphics processing engines such as 3Dengines, blit engines, execution units, and media engines, to name afew.

In one embodiment, a user of each client 1901-1902 has an account on theservice hosting the server(s) 1930. For example, the service may offer asubscription service to provide users remote access to onlineapplications 1932-1933 such as video games, productivity applications,and multi-player virtual reality applications. In one embodiment, theapplications are executed remotely on a virtual machine in response touser input 1907-1908 from the clients 1901-1902. Although notillustrated in FIG. 19, one or more CPUs may also be virtualized andused to execute the applications 1932-1933, with graphics processingoperations offloaded to the vGPUs 1934-1935.

In one embodiment, a sequence of image frames are generated by the vGPUs1934-1935 in response to the execution of the graphics operations. Forexample, in a first person shooter game, a user may specify input 1907to move a character around a fantasy world. In one embodiment, theresulting images are compressed (e.g., by compression circuitry/logic,not shown) and streamed over the network 1910 to the clients 1901-1902.In one implementation, a video compression algorithm such as H.261 maybe used; however, various different compression techniques may be used.Decoders 1905-1906 decode the incoming video streams, which are thenrendered on respective displays 1903-1904 of the clients 1901-1902.

Using the system illustrated in FIG. 19, high performance graphicsprocessing resources such as GPUs 1938 may be allocated to differentclients who subscribe to the service. In an online gamingimplementation, for example, the servers 1930 may host new video gamesas they are released. The video game program code is then executed inthe virtualized environment and the resulting video frames compressedand streamed to each client 1901-1902. The clients 1901-1902 in thisarchitecture do not require significant graphics processing resources.For example, even a relatively low power smartphone or tablet with adecoder 1905-1906 will be capable of decompressing a video stream. Thus,the latest graphics-intensive video games may be played on any type ofclient capable of compressing video. While video games are described asone possible implementation, the underlying principles of the inventionmay be used for any form of application which requires graphicsprocessing resources (e.g., graphic design applications, interactive andnon-interactive ray tracing applications, productivity software, videoediting software, etc).

Apparatus and Method for Allocating a Tile Cache Between VirtualMachines and Applications

In one embodiment, tile caches are used to store tile data used for 3Drendering. The “tiles” may be graphics tiles used for tile-basedrendering techniques such as tile-based immediate mode rendering.Different applications/VMs may share a single tile cache within a GPU.This can be problematic when one VM/application consumes a largerportion of the tile cache than it should.

One embodiment of the invention allows VMs or applications to beassigned different priorities with respect to allocation of the tilecache, to ensure that higher priority applications are guaranteed tilecache storage ahead of lower priority applications.

FIG. 20 illustrates one implementation with two different apps and/orVMs running—app0/VM0 and app1/VM1. Embodiments of the invention, ofcourse, may include more than two apps/VMs. Each of the apps/VMs may berunning a 3D application which streams 3D commands through a commandstreamer 2001. In particular, each app/VM may have its own command queueinto which it sends commands which are then processed by commandstreamer 2001. In the illustrated embodiment, a tile cache allocationmodule 2002 allocates a portion of a tile cache 2012 to each app/VM inaccordance with a relative priority associated with the app/VM. In theillustrated embodiment, a first region 2020 is allocated to app0/VM0 anda second region 2021 is allocated to app1/VM1. The size of each region2020-2021 may be allocated based on the relative priorities of app0/VM0and app1/VM1. For example, if app1/VM1 is assigned a lower priority thanapp0/VM0, then it will be assigned a relatively smaller portion of thetile cache 2012. Priorities may be specified by integer values from 1(lowest priority) to 4 (highest priority). Thus, if app0/VM0 is assigneda priority of 4 and app1/VM1 is assigned a priority of 1, then app0/VM0may be assigned 80% (⅘) of the tile cache 2012 and app1/VM1 may beassigned the remaining 20% (⅕).

In one embodiment, a tile cache memory region 2041 is defined within thesystem memory as a spill-over region. If an app/VM requires more spacethan what is allocated in the tile cache 2012, then the data spills overinto the tile cache memory region 2041. This may be implementedtransparently to the end user. For example, upon receiving a request fordata stored in the tile cache 2012, the tile cache allocation module2002 may determine whether the requested data is in the tile cache 2012or in the tile cache region 2041 in system memory 2040. If in systemmemory 2040, it may perform a virtual to physical address translation tolocate the physical address in system memory 2040 (or hand off thememory request to the memory controller). In one implementation, thetile cache 2012 is 4-8 Mbytes, but the underlying principles of theinvention are not limited to any particular size for the tile cache.

In one implementation, priorities may be set based on the type ofapp/VM. For example, if a particular 3D app requires very low latency(e.g., an interactive 3D game), then this 3D app may be assigned thehighest priority available. By contrast, if a 3D app is non-interactiveand does not require the same low latency, then this app may be assigneda relatively lower priority. In addition, priorities may be set based onwhether an app is a foreground app or a background app (e.g., providinghigher priorities to foreground apps).

The techniques described herein prevent one particular application or VMfrom monopolizing the entire tile cache at the expense of anotherapplication or VM. Using these techniques, each application or VM willbe allocated a particular portion of the tile cache. When this portionis consumed, the data will spill over into a designated memory region.

A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention isillustrated in FIG. 21. The method may be implemented within the contextof the graphics processing architectures described herein, but is notlimited to any particular architecture.

At 2101, the priority of each of the different Apps/VMs sharing the tilecache is determined. At 2102, tile cache regions are allocated based onthe relative priorities of each of the Apps/VMs. If a particular regionbecomes full, determined at 2103, then the excess tile data is spilledover into system memory at 2104. In either case, the process returns to2101 to determine whether new Apps/VMs have been started and whether anew priority-based reallocation is required.

Power Provisioning in a Virtualized Graphics Environment

Hardware entities such as functional units, graphics engines, or slicesare allocated to individual VMs. In one embodiment, a power managementunit independently controls the voltage and/or frequency provided toeach of the hardware entities in accordance with the VM allocated to thehardware entities. Thus, in addition to allocating slices to VMs toadjust performance, the voltage/frequency provided to the slices (orindividual components included in the slices) may be dynamicallyadjusted (e.g., raising voltage/frequency to improve performance).

FIG. 22 illustrates one particular embodiment which includes a commonhardware component 2200 shared by all of the VMs and individual hardwareentities 2210 which are individually allocated to different VMs. By wayof example, the common hardware component 2200 may comprise a memorycontroller, potentially with one or more cache layers and a TLB sharedby the hardware entities 2210. As mentioned, the hardware entities 2210may include circuitry and/or logic at various levels of granularity suchas slices, graphics engines, or functional units. For example, thehardware entities may include instruction fetch/decode units;instruction schedulers; execution units; individual functional unitswithin the execution units; L1, L2, or L3 caches; traversal units;samplers; media units; register allocation units; or retirement/reorderunits, to name a few.

In one embodiment, once the hardware entities 2210 are allocated toindividual VMs, the performance of the hardware entities may becontrolled by a power/performance management unit 2205. For example, thepower/performance management unit 2205 may individually adjust thevoltage/frequency provided to each of the hardware entities 2210. In oneimplementation, dynamic voltage and frequency slewing is performed, withthe frequency being controlled by Digital phase locked loops (DPLLs) andoperating voltage regulated by Integrated Voltage Regulator Modules(IVRM). Each hardware entity 2210 may have its own voltage regulationmodule and set of DPLLs controlled by the power/performance managementunit 2205. The power/performance management unit 2205 may adjust thevoltage/frequency based on the VMs which are allocated to each hardwareentity 2210 as well as the priorities associated with each VM. Forexample, power/performance management unit 2205 may allocate highervoltages/frequencies to VMs which require relatively higher performanceand lower voltages/frequencies to VMs which are to operate at relativelylower performance. A power budget may be established on the GPU chip,and the power/performance management unit 2205 will adjustvoltages/frequencies to keep the GPU within its designated power budget.

In addition, as illustrated in FIG. 22, the power/performance managementunit 2205 may adjust voltage/frequency based on monitoring datacollected from each of the hardware entities 2210. For example,temperatures may be read from each of the hardware entities 2210 andperformance data may be collected from performance counters spreadthroughout the hardware entities 2210. If the temperature of aparticular hardware entity is above a specified threshold, for example,then the power/performance management unit 2205 may reduce thevoltage/frequency provided to this entity. Similarly, if the performancedata indicates that a particular entity is overloaded (e.g., becauseinternal queues are full), then it may increase the voltage/frequency tothat hardware entity 2210 so that the hardware entity 2210 can performits operations more efficiently.

The power/performance management entity 2205 keeps track of the hardwareentities 2210 allocated to each of the VMs and thereby keeps track ofthe power consumption at a VM level. Pre-provisioned limits on powerconsumption (voltage, and hence frequency) may be enforced on each ofthe VMs by the power/performance management hardware 2205.

A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention isillustrated in FIG. 23. The method may be implemented within the contextof the graphics processing architectures described herein, but is notlimited to any particular architecture.

At 2301 the initial allocation of hardware entities to VMs is performedbased on priorities and/or processing requirements of the VMs (orapplications executed on the VMs). At 2302, the voltage/frequencyprovided to each of the hardware entities is independently set based onthe priorities and/or processing requirements of the assigned VMs. At2303, monitoring is performed by collecting temperatures reported bytemperature sensors and performance data from performance countersdistributed among each of the hardware entities. In addition, anychanges to the priorities of the VMs and/or the processing requirementsor each VM are detected. If changes are detected or one or morethresholds reached, determined at 2304, then at 2306 thevoltage/frequency is adjusted and/or hardware entities are reallocatedacross VMs in accordance with the detected changes. For example, if theGPU is exceeding its power budget or if a temperature is above athreshold then the voltage/frequency of all or a subset of hardwareentities may be decreased. Similarly, if the processing requirements orpriority of a VM has changed, then the number of slices allocated tothat VM may be adjusted. As another example, if performance countersindicate that a particular hardware entity is overloaded, then work maybe offloaded to another hardware entity. A variety of adjustments may bemade at 2306 consistent with the underlying principles of the invention.If no changes or thresholds are detected then at 2305 the existingvoltage/frequency allocation and existing allocation of hardwareentities to VMs is maintained.

Virtualizing Shared Local Memory (SLM)

Shared local memory (SLM) is a small local memory (e.g., 1-2 MB)utilized by functional units within a GPU. SLM is not accessible withinthe system address space and is not part of the caching hierarchy usedby the GPU. Because the SLM is not virtualized today, one VM orapplication may consume the entire SLM, reducing the performance ofother VMs/applications.

One embodiment of the invention virtualizes the SLM and intelligentlyallocates portions of the SLM to different virtual machines (VMs) orapplications. This embodiment includes techniques to allow portions ofdata from each VM to spill over into system memory when the VM'sallocated portion of SLM is full. In one implementation, a threadscheduler within the GPU allocates less than the total SLM but notifiesthe VM or application that it has been given the total amount. It willthen allocate a portion of the space from the SLM to the VM/application,overflowing the rest into system memory transparently to the VM orapplication.

FIG. 24 illustrates one embodiment in which two VMs (VM0 and VM1) arecompeting for storage of an SLM 2412 within a GPU 2411. If both of theVMs request the full SLM space (e.g., 1 MB), one embodiment of the SLMcontroller 2432 will share the SLM between the two VMs (e.g., givingeach 512 kB) and spill out the remaining into a virtual SLM storage 2441in system memory 2440 (potentially hitting the L3 cache 2438). In mostcases, the VMs will not use most of the space in the SLM so accesses tosystem memory 2440 will occur infrequently.

In one embodiment, the thread scheduler 2435 and/or the SLM controller2432 tracks those portions of SLM space which are in the SLM 2412 andthose portions which are spilled over into system memory 2440. As aresult of these techniques, the thread dispatching performed by thethread scheduler 2435 will not stall as in current implementations.

In one embodiment, upon receiving a request from a VM, the SLMcontroller 2432 will check to determine whether the request will beprovided to the actual SLM 2432 or spill over into the SLM region 2441in system memory 2440. If the data is in the SLM region 2441,translation circuitry and/or logic within the SLM controller 2432translates and redirects the request to the system memory address neededto access the virtual SLM space 2441.

In one implementation, VM1 accesses its portion of system memory byspecifying a different base address than that used by VM2. This baseaddress is then combined with an offset to identify the data in the SLM2412. If stored in the SLM region 2441 in system memory 2440, the SLMcontroller 2432 will translate the request to the required system memoryaddress. For example, the base+offset combination may point to anaddress which is not allocated to the VM in the SLM 2412 and the SLMcontroller 2432 will map the base+offset value to the appropriate systemaddress.

While the SLM controller 2432 may allocate the SLM 2412 evenly betweenthe VMs as described above, in an embodiment in which the VMs areassigned different priorities, the SLM controller 2432 may assign alarger portion of the SLM 2412 to the VM with the higher priority. Forexample, if VM0 has a priority of 1 (highest priority) and VM1 has apriority of 3, then the SLM 2412 may allocate ¼ of the SLM to VM1 and ¾to VM0 (i.e., ⅓+1 and 3/3+1). Of course, the SLM 2412 may be allocatedto VMs with different priorities in a variety of ways while stillcomplying with the underlying principles of the invention.

A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention isillustrated in FIG. 25. The method may be implemented within the contextof the graphics processing architectures described herein, but is notlimited to any particular architecture.

At 2501, an SLM is allocated between a plurality of VMs. As discussedabove, this may involve allocating the SLM equally among the VMs orallocating the SLM in accordance with relative priorities of the VMs. Inresponse to an SLM request at 2502 from one of the VMs, which includes abase/offset combination, a determination is made at 2503 as to whetherthe data is stored in the SLM or in system memory. If the data is storedin the SLM, then at 2504, the base/offset is used to access the SLM. Ifnot, then at 2505, the base/offset is translated to a system memoryaddress (i.e., within the system memory range allocated to storingspillover from the SLM).

Provisioning of Memory Fabric

In one embodiment, the memory fabric in a virtualized GPU implementationis shared by various graphics processing resources in a GPU (e.g., EUs,samplers, shaders data ports, etc) and is also shared by all of the VMsrunning in the virtualized environment. Dynamic memory fabricprovisioning logic allocates a portion of the memory fabric bandwidth toeach of these resources in accordance with the particular VM for whichthe resource is performing its function.

FIG. 26 illustrates one implementation in which various resources withina GPU 2610 including EUs 2610, pixel shaders 2611, samplers 2612, anddata ports 2613 are shared among a plurality of virtual machines2660-2661 via a hypervisor 2655. For example, a first set of EUs 2610may be processing graphics data for VM 2660 while a second set processesgraphics data for VM 2661. Each of the resources 2610-2613 and VMs2660-2661 compete for use of the memory fabric 2630 which couples all ofthe system components to the cache hierarchy 2620 and system memory2630. While a specific set of resources 2610-2613 are illustrated inFIG. 26, the underlying principles of the invention may be implementedusing any set or grouping of resources (e.g., such as slices orindividual functional units).

In one embodiment, dynamic memory fabric allocation logic 2600 allocatesuse of the memory fabric to each of the GPU resources 2610-2613 based onthe VM for which each resource is performing work. For example, in asimple case where each of the VMs is assigned the same priority, thedynamic memory fabric allocation module 2600 allocates 50% of the usageof the memory fabric 2630 to VM 2660 and 50% to VM 2661. Alternatively,if VM 2660 is assigned a higher priority than VM 2661, then the dynamicmemory fabric allocation module 2600 will allocate relatively morecycles on the memory fabric 2630 to VM 2660.

In one embodiment, counters 2650 may be programmed by the hypervisor2655 to implement the priority-based allocation. For example, if VM 2660is assigned a priority of 5 and VM 2661 is assigned a priority of 2,then a counter may be initially set to 5 for VM 2660 and decrementedupon each transaction associated with VM 2660 on of the memory fabric2630. Once the counter reaches a value of 0, another counter (or thesame counter) may be set to a value of 2 for VM 2661 will be decrementedas VM 2661 uses the memory fabric until it reaches 0. The first counterwill then be reset to 5 and the process continues. In this example, VM2661 is allocated 2 cycles of the memory fabric 2630 for every 5 cyclesallocated to VM 2660. In this manner, VM 2660 is allocated a portion ofthe memory fabric based on its relative priority to VM 2661. Relativepriorities may be implemented in various different ways.

The counters may be decremented in response to a variety of eventsassociated with usage of the memory fabric 2630. For example, countersmay be decremented at the end of a specified time period (e.g., blocksof microseconds) or after a certain number of transactions or operationshave progressed through the memory fabric 2630. A minimum memory fabricallocation may be specified so that each resource 2610-2613 is allocateda sufficient portion of the memory fabric 2630.

A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention isillustrated in FIG. 27. The method may be implemented within the contextof the graphics processing architectures described herein, but is notlimited to any particular architecture.

At 2701 priorities associated with different VMs being executed by thegraphics processing resources are identified. In one embodiment, this isaccomplished using a VM/context ID associated with each VM andidentifying the priority associated with the VM/context ID. Prioritiesmay be adjusted statically based on a quality of service guaranteed fora particular user and/or may be adjusted dynamically, based on theworkload submitted by each VM.

At 2702, counter values are programmed in accordance with the relativepriorities of each VM being run on the system (as in the specificexamples provided above). Variable N is set to 0 at 2703. At 2704, thememory fabric is allocated to graphics processing resources associatedwith VM_(N) (VM₀ initially for N=0). At 2705, COUNTER_(N) associatedwith VM_(N) is decremented based on usage of the memory fabric. Asmentioned above, the counter may be decremented after a block of one ormore cycles have elapsed, after one or more transactions have completed,or after a designated block of time has passed. When COUNTER_(N) reaches0, determined at 2706, then a determination is made at 2707 as towhether this is the last VM to be serviced. If not, then the value of Nis incremented at 2708, and the memory fabric is allocated to graphicsprocessing resources associated with the next VM (e.g., VM_(N+1)). Oncethe last VM is serviced, determined at 2707, then at 2709, adetermination is made as to whether any of the VM priorities havechanged. If not, the process returns to 2703, and graphics processingresources currently associated with the first VM are again providedaccess to the memory fabric. If so, then the process returns to 2702,where new program counter values are stored in accordance with the newrelative priories.

The end result of these embodiments is that each VM is allocated accessto the memory fabric in accordance with its assigned priority, therebyensuring fair access to all VMs based on priority.

In some embodiments, a graphics processing unit (GPU) is communicativelycoupled to host/processor cores to accelerate graphics operations,machine-learning operations, pattern analysis operations, and variousgeneral purpose GPU (GPGPU) functions. The GPU may be communicativelycoupled to the host processor/cores over a bus or another interconnect(e.g., a high-speed interconnect such as PCIe or NVLink). In otherembodiments, the GPU may be integrated on the same package or chip asthe cores and communicatively coupled to the cores over an internalprocessor bus/interconnect (i.e., internal to the package or chip).Regardless of the manner in which the GPU is connected, the processorcores may allocate work to the GPU in the form of sequences ofcommands/instructions contained in a work descriptor. The GPU then usesdedicated circuitry/logic for efficiently processing thesecommands/instructions.

In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth toprovide a more thorough understanding. However, it will be apparent toone of skill in the art that the embodiments described herein may bepracticed without one or more of these specific details. In otherinstances, well-known features have not been described to avoidobscuring the details of the present embodiments.

System Overview

FIG. 28 is a block diagram illustrating a computing system 2800configured to implement one or more aspects of the embodiments describedherein. The computing system 2800 includes a processing subsystem 2801having one or more processor(s) 2802 and a system memory 2804communicating via an interconnection path that may include a memory hub2805. The memory hub 2805 may be a separate component within a chipsetcomponent or may be integrated within the one or more processor(s) 2802.The memory hub 2805 couples with an I/O subsystem 2811 via acommunication link 2806. The I/O subsystem 2811 includes an I/O hub 2807that can enable the computing system 2800 to receive input from one ormore input device(s) 2808. Additionally, the I/O hub 2807 can enable adisplay controller, which may be included in the one or moreprocessor(s) 2802, to provide outputs to one or more display device(s)2810A. In one embodiment the one or more display device(s) 2810A coupledwith the I/O hub 2807 can include a local, internal, or embedded displaydevice.

In one embodiment the processing subsystem 2801 includes one or moreparallel processor(s) 2812 coupled to memory hub 2805 via a bus or othercommunication link 2813. The communication link 2813 may be one of anynumber of standards based communication link technologies or protocols,such as, but not limited to PCI Express, or may be a vendor specificcommunications interface or communications fabric. In one embodiment theone or more parallel processor(s) 2812 form a computationally focusedparallel or vector processing system that an include a large number ofprocessing cores and/or processing clusters, such as a many integratedcore (MIC) processor. In one embodiment the one or more parallelprocessor(s) 2812 form a graphics processing subsystem that can outputpixels to one of the one or more display device(s) 2810A coupled via theI/O Hub 2807. The one or more parallel processor(s) 2812 can alsoinclude a display controller and display interface (not shown) to enablea direct connection to one or more display device(s) 2810B.

Within the I/O subsystem 2811, a system storage unit 2814 can connect tothe I/O hub 2807 to provide a storage mechanism for the computing system2800. An I/O switch 2816 can be used to provide an interface mechanismto enable connections between the I/O hub 2807 and other components,such as a network adapter 2818 and/or wireless network adapter 2819 thatmay be integrated into the platform, and various other devices that canbe added via one or more add-in device(s) 2820. The network adapter 2818can be an Ethernet adapter or another wired network adapter. Thewireless network adapter 2819 can include one or more of a Wi-Fi,Bluetooth, near field communication (NFC), or other network device thatincludes one or more wireless radios.

The computing system 2800 can include other components not explicitlyshown, including USB or other port connections, optical storage drives,video capture devices, and the like, may also be connected to the I/Ohub 2807. Communication paths interconnecting the various components inFIG. 28 may be implemented using any suitable protocols, such as PCI(Peripheral Component Interconnect) based protocols (e.g., PCI-Express),or any other bus or point-to-point communication interfaces and/orprotocol(s), such as the NV-Link high-speed interconnect, orinterconnect protocols known in the art.

In one embodiment, the one or more parallel processor(s) 2812incorporate circuitry optimized for graphics and video processing,including, for example, video output circuitry, and constitutes agraphics processing unit (GPU). In another embodiment, the one or moreparallel processor(s) 2812 incorporate circuitry optimized for generalpurpose processing, while preserving the underlying computationalarchitecture, described in greater detail herein. In yet anotherembodiment, components of the computing system 2800 may be integratedwith one or more other system elements on a single integrated circuit.For example, the one or more parallel processor(s), 2812 memory hub2805, processor(s) 2802, and I/O hub 2807 can be integrated into asystem on chip (SoC) integrated circuit. Alternatively, the componentsof the computing system 2800 can be integrated into a single package toform a system in package (SIP) configuration. In one embodiment at leasta portion of the components of the computing system 2800 can beintegrated into a multi-chip module (MCM), which can be interconnectedwith other multi-chip modules into a modular computing system.

It will be appreciated that the computing system 2800 shown herein isillustrative and that variations and modifications are possible. Theconnection topology, including the number and arrangement of bridges,the number of processor(s) 2802, and the number of parallel processor(s)2812, may be modified as desired. For instance, in some embodiments,system memory 2804 is connected to the processor(s) 2802 directly ratherthan through a bridge, while other devices communicate with systemmemory 2804 via the memory hub 2805 and the processor(s) 2802. In otheralternative topologies, the parallel processor(s) 2812 are connected tothe I/O hub 2807 or directly to one of the one or more processor(s)2802, rather than to the memory hub 2805. In other embodiments, the I/Ohub 2807 and memory hub 2805 may be integrated into a single chip. Someembodiments may include two or more sets of processor(s) 2802 attachedvia multiple sockets, which can couple with two or more instances of theparallel processor(s) 2812.

Some of the particular components shown herein are optional and may notbe included in all implementations of the computing system 2800. Forexample, any number of add-in cards or peripherals may be supported, orsome components may be eliminated. Furthermore, some architectures mayuse different terminology for components similar to those illustrated inFIG. 28. For example, the memory hub 2805 may be referred to as aNorthbridge in some architectures, while the I/O hub 2807 may bereferred to as a Southbridge.

FIG. 29A illustrates a parallel processor 2900, according to anembodiment. The various components of the parallel processor 2900 may beimplemented using one or more integrated circuit devices, such asprogrammable processors, application specific integrated circuits(ASICs), or field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The illustratedparallel processor 2900 is a variant of the one or more parallelprocessor(s) 2812 shown in FIG. 28, according to an embodiment.

In one embodiment the parallel processor 2900 includes a parallelprocessing unit 2902. The parallel processing unit includes an I/O unit2904 that enables communication with other devices, including otherinstances of the parallel processing unit 2902. The I/O unit 2904 may bedirectly connected to other devices. In one embodiment the I/O unit 2904connects with other devices via the use of a hub or switch interface,such as memory hub 2805. The connections between the memory hub 2805 andthe I/O unit 2904 form a communication link 2813. Within the parallelprocessing unit 2902, the I/O unit 2904 connects with a host interface2906 and a memory crossbar 2916, where the host interface 2906 receivescommands directed to performing processing operations and the memorycrossbar 2916 receives commands directed to performing memoryoperations.

When the host interface 2906 receives a command buffer via the I/O unit2904, the host interface 2906 can direct work operations to performthose commands to a front end 2908. In one embodiment the front end 2908couples with a scheduler 2910, which is configured to distributecommands or other work items to a processing cluster array 2912. In oneembodiment the scheduler 2910 ensures that the processing cluster array2912 is properly configured and in a valid state before tasks aredistributed to the processing clusters of the processing cluster array2912. In one embodiment the scheduler 2910 is implemented via firmwarelogic executing on a microcontroller. The microcontroller implementedscheduler 2910 is configurable to perform complex scheduling and workdistribution operations at coarse and fine granularity, enabling rapidpreemption and context switching of threads executing on the processingarray 2912. In one embodiment, the host software can prove workloads forscheduling on the processing array 2912 via one of multiple graphicsprocessing doorbells. The workloads can then be automaticallydistributed across the processing array 2912 by the scheduler 2910 logicwithin the scheduler microcontroller.

The processing cluster array 2912 can include up to “N” processingclusters (e.g., cluster 2914A, cluster 2914B, through cluster 2914N).Each cluster 2914A-2914N of the processing cluster array 2912 canexecute a large number of concurrent threads. The scheduler 2910 canallocate work to the clusters 2914A-2914N of the processing clusterarray 2912 using various scheduling and/or work distribution algorithms,which may vary depending on the workload arising for each type ofprogram or computation. The scheduling can be handled dynamically by thescheduler 2910, or can be assisted in part by compiler logic duringcompilation of program logic configured for execution by the processingcluster array 2912. In one embodiment, different clusters 2914A-2914N ofthe processing cluster array 2912 can be allocated for processingdifferent types of programs or for performing different types ofcomputations.

The processing cluster array 2912 can be configured to perform varioustypes of parallel processing operations. In one embodiment theprocessing cluster array 2912 is configured to perform general-purposeparallel compute operations. For example, the processing cluster array2912 can include logic to execute processing tasks including filteringof video and/or audio data, performing modeling operations, includingphysics operations, and performing data transformations.

In one embodiment the processing cluster array 2912 is configured toperform parallel graphics processing operations. In embodiments in whichthe parallel processor 2900 is configured to perform graphics processingoperations, the processing cluster array 2912 can include additionallogic to support the execution of such graphics processing operations,including, but not limited to texture sampling logic to perform textureoperations, as well as tessellation logic and other vertex processinglogic. Additionally, the processing cluster array 2912 can be configuredto execute graphics processing related shader programs such as, but notlimited to vertex shaders, tessellation shaders, geometry shaders, andpixel shaders. The parallel processing unit 2902 can transfer data fromsystem memory via the I/O unit 2904 for processing. During processingthe transferred data can be stored to on-chip memory (e.g., parallelprocessor memory 2922) during processing, then written back to systemmemory.

In one embodiment, when the parallel processing unit 2902 is used toperform graphics processing, the scheduler 2910 can be configured todivide the processing workload into approximately equal sized tasks, tobetter enable distribution of the graphics processing operations tomultiple clusters 2914A-2914N of the processing cluster array 2912. Insome embodiments, portions of the processing cluster array 2912 can beconfigured to perform different types of processing. For example a firstportion may be configured to perform vertex shading and topologygeneration, a second portion may be configured to perform tessellationand geometry shading, and a third portion may be configured to performpixel shading or other screen space operations, to produce a renderedimage for display. Intermediate data produced by one or more of theclusters 2914A-2914N may be stored in buffers to allow the intermediatedata to be transmitted between clusters 2914A-2914N for furtherprocessing.

During operation, the processing cluster array 2912 can receiveprocessing tasks to be executed via the scheduler 2910, which receivescommands defining processing tasks from front end 2908. For graphicsprocessing operations, processing tasks can include indices of data tobe processed, e.g., surface (patch) data, primitive data, vertex data,and/or pixel data, as well as state parameters and commands defining howthe data is to be processed (e.g., what program is to be executed). Thescheduler 2910 may be configured to fetch the indices corresponding tothe tasks or may receive the indices from the front end 2908. The frontend 2908 can be configured to ensure the processing cluster array 2912is configured to a valid state before the workload specified by incomingcommand buffers (e.g., batch-buffers, push buffers, etc.) is initiated.

Each of the one or more instances of the parallel processing unit 2902can couple with parallel processor memory 2922. The parallel processormemory 2922 can be accessed via the memory crossbar 2916, which canreceive memory requests from the processing cluster array 2912 as wellas the I/O unit 2904. The memory crossbar 2916 can access the parallelprocessor memory 2922 via a memory interface 2918. The memory interface2918 can include multiple partition units (e.g., partition unit 2920A,partition unit 2920B, through partition unit 2920N) that can each coupleto a portion (e.g., memory unit) of parallel processor memory 2922. Inone implementation the number of partition units 2920A-2920N isconfigured to be equal to the number of memory units, such that a firstpartition unit 2920A has a corresponding first memory unit 2924A, asecond partition unit 2920B has a corresponding memory unit 2924B, andan Nth partition unit 2920N has a corresponding Nth memory unit 2924N.In other embodiments, the number of partition units 2920A-2920N may notbe equal to the number of memory devices.

In various embodiments, the memory units 2924A-2924N can include varioustypes of memory devices, including dynamic random access memory (DRAM)or graphics random access memory, such as synchronous graphics randomaccess memory (SGRAM), including graphics double data rate (GDDR)memory. In one embodiment, the memory units 2924A-2924N may also include3D stacked memory, including but not limited to high bandwidth memory(HBM). Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that the specificimplementation of the memory units 2924A-2924N can vary, and can beselected from one of various conventional designs. Render targets, suchas frame buffers or texture maps may be stored across the memory units2924A-2924N, allowing partition units 2920A-2920N to write portions ofeach render target in parallel to efficiently use the availablebandwidth of parallel processor memory 2922. In some embodiments, alocal instance of the parallel processor memory 2922 may be excluded infavor of a unified memory design that utilizes system memory inconjunction with local cache memory.

In one embodiment, any one of the clusters 2914A-2914N of the processingcluster array 2912 can process data that will be written to any of thememory units 2924A-2924N within parallel processor memory 2922. Thememory crossbar 2916 can be configured to transfer the output of eachcluster 2914A-2914N to any partition unit 2920A-2920N or to anothercluster 2914A-2914N, which can perform additional processing operationson the output. Each cluster 2914A-2914N can communicate with the memoryinterface 2918 through the memory crossbar 2916 to read from or write tovarious external memory devices. In one embodiment the memory crossbar2916 has a connection to the memory interface 2918 to communicate withthe I/O unit 2904, as well as a connection to a local instance of theparallel processor memory 2922, enabling the processing units within thedifferent processing clusters 2914A-2914N to communicate with systemmemory or other memory that is not local to the parallel processing unit2902. In one embodiment the memory crossbar 2916 can use virtualchannels to separate traffic streams between the clusters 2914A-2914Nand the partition units 2920A-2920N.

While a single instance of the parallel processing unit 2902 isillustrated within the parallel processor 2900, any number of instancesof the parallel processing unit 2902 can be included. For example,multiple instances of the parallel processing unit 2902 can be providedon a single add-in card, or multiple add-in cards can be interconnected.The different instances of the parallel processing unit 2902 can beconfigured to inter-operate even if the different instances havedifferent numbers of processing cores, different amounts of localparallel processor memory, and/or other configuration differences. Forexample and in one embodiment, some instances of the parallel processingunit 2902 can include higher precision floating point units relative toother instances. Systems incorporating one or more instances of theparallel processing unit 2902 or the parallel processor 2900 can beimplemented in a variety of configurations and form factors, includingbut not limited to desktop, laptop, or handheld personal computers,servers, workstations, game consoles, and/or embedded systems.

FIG. 29B is a block diagram of a partition unit 2920, according to anembodiment. In one embodiment the partition unit 2920 is an instance ofone of the partition units 2920A-2920N of FIG. 29A. As illustrated, thepartition unit 2920 includes an L2 cache 2921, a frame buffer interface2925, and a ROP 2926 (raster operations unit). The L2 cache 2921 is aread/write cache that is configured to perform load and store operationsreceived from the memory crossbar 2916 and ROP 2926. Read misses andurgent write-back requests are output by L2 cache 2921 to frame bufferinterface 2925 for processing. Updates can also be sent to the framebuffer via the frame buffer interface 2925 for processing. In oneembodiment the frame buffer interface 2925 interfaces with one of thememory units in parallel processor memory, such as the memory units2924A-2924N of FIG. 29 (e.g., within parallel processor memory 2922).

In graphics applications, the ROP 2926 is a processing unit thatperforms raster operations such as stencil, z test, blending, and thelike. The ROP 2926 then outputs processed graphics data that is storedin graphics memory. In some embodiments the ROP 2926 includescompression logic to compress depth or color data that is written tomemory and decompress depth or color data that is read from memory. Thecompression logic can be lossless compression logic that makes use ofone or more of multiple compression algorithms. The type of compressionthat is performed by the ROP 2926 can vary based on the statisticalcharacteristics of the data to be compressed. For example, in oneembodiment, delta color compression is performed on depth and color dataon a per-tile basis.

In some embodiments, the ROP 2926 is included within each processingcluster (e.g., cluster 2914A-2914N of FIG. 29) instead of within thepartition unit 2920. In such embodiment, read and write requests forpixel data are transmitted over the memory crossbar 2916 instead ofpixel fragment data. The processed graphics data may be displayed on adisplay device, such as one of the one or more display device(s) 2810 ofFIG. 28, routed for further processing by the processor(s) 2802, orrouted for further processing by one of the processing entities withinthe parallel processor 2900 of FIG. 29A.

FIG. 29C is a block diagram of a processing cluster 2914 within aparallel processing unit, according to an embodiment. In one embodimentthe processing cluster is an instance of one of the processing clusters2914A-2914N of FIG. 29. The processing cluster 2914 can be configured toexecute many threads in parallel, where the term “thread” refers to aninstance of a particular program executing on a particular set of inputdata. In some embodiments, single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD)instruction issue techniques are used to support parallel execution of alarge number of threads without providing multiple independentinstruction units. In other embodiments, single-instruction,multiple-thread (SIMT) techniques are used to support parallel executionof a large number of generally synchronized threads, using a commoninstruction unit configured to issue instructions to a set of processingengines within each one of the processing clusters. Unlike a SIMDexecution regime, where all processing engines typically executeidentical instructions, SIMT execution allows different threads to morereadily follow divergent execution paths through a given thread program.Persons skilled in the art will understand that a SIMD processing regimerepresents a functional subset of a SIMT processing regime.

Operation of the processing cluster 2914 can be controlled via apipeline manager 2932 that distributes processing tasks to SIMT parallelprocessors. The pipeline manager 2932 receives instructions from thescheduler 2910 of FIG. 29 and manages execution of those instructionsvia a graphics multiprocessor 2934 and/or a texture unit 2936. Theillustrated graphics multiprocessor 2934 is an exemplary instance of aSIMT parallel processor. However, various types of SIMT parallelprocessors of differing architectures may be included within theprocessing cluster 2914. One or more instances of the graphicsmultiprocessor 2934 can be included within a processing cluster 2914.The graphics multiprocessor 2934 can process data and a data crossbar2940 can be used to distribute the processed data to one of multiplepossible destinations, including other shader units. The pipelinemanager 2932 can facilitate the distribution of processed data byspecifying destinations for processed data to be distributed vis thedata crossbar 2940.

Each graphics multiprocessor 2934 within the processing cluster 2914 caninclude an identical set of functional execution logic (e.g., arithmeticlogic units, load-store units, etc.). The functional execution logic canbe configured in a pipelined manner in which new instructions can beissued before previous instructions are complete. The functionalexecution logic supports a variety of operations including integer andfloating point arithmetic, comparison operations, Boolean operations,bit-shifting, and computation of various algebraic functions. In oneembodiment the same functional-unit hardware can be leveraged to performdifferent operations and any combination of functional units may bepresent.

The instructions transmitted to the processing cluster 2914 constitutesa thread. A set of threads executing across the set of parallelprocessing engines is a thread group. A thread group executes the sameprogram on different input data. Each thread within a thread group canbe assigned to a different processing engine within a graphicsmultiprocessor 2934. A thread group may include fewer threads than thenumber of processing engines within the graphics multiprocessor 2934.When a thread group includes fewer threads than the number of processingengines, one or more of the processing engines may be idle during cyclesin which that thread group is being processed. A thread group may alsoinclude more threads than the number of processing engines within thegraphics multiprocessor 2934. When the thread group includes morethreads than the number of processing engines within the graphicsmultiprocessor 2934, processing can be performed over consecutive clockcycles. In one embodiment multiple thread groups can be executedconcurrently on a graphics multiprocessor 2934.

In one embodiment the graphics multiprocessor 2934 includes an internalcache memory to perform load and store operations. In one embodiment,the graphics multiprocessor 2934 can forego an internal cache and use acache memory (e.g., L1 cache 308) within the processing cluster 2914.Each graphics multiprocessor 2934 also has access to L2 caches withinthe partition units (e.g., partition units 2920A-2920N of FIG. 29) thatare shared among all processing clusters 2914 and may be used totransfer data between threads. The graphics multiprocessor 2934 may alsoaccess off-chip global memory, which can include one or more of localparallel processor memory and/or system memory. Any memory external tothe parallel processing unit 2902 may be used as global memory.Embodiments in which the processing cluster 2914 includes multipleinstances of the graphics multiprocessor 2934 can share commoninstructions and data, which may be stored in the L1 cache 308.

Each processing cluster 2914 may include an MMU 2945 (memory managementunit) that is configured to map virtual addresses into physicaladdresses. In other embodiments, one or more instances of the MMU 2945may reside within the memory interface 2918 of FIG. 29. The MMU 2945includes a set of page table entries (PTEs) used to map a virtualaddress to a physical address of a tile (talk more about tiling) andoptionally a cache line index. The MMU 2945 may include addresstranslation lookaside buffers (TLB) or caches that may reside within thegraphics multiprocessor 2934 or the L1 cache or processing cluster 2914.The physical address is processed to distribute surface data accesslocality to allow efficient request interleaving among partition units.The cache line index may be used to determine whether a request for acache line is a hit or miss.

In graphics and computing applications, a processing cluster 2914 may beconfigured such that each graphics multiprocessor 2934 is coupled to atexture unit 2936 for performing texture mapping operations, e.g.,determining texture sample positions, reading texture data, andfiltering the texture data. Texture data is read from an internaltexture L1 cache (not shown) or in some embodiments from the L1 cachewithin graphics multiprocessor 2934 and is fetched from an L2 cache,local parallel processor memory, or system memory, as needed. Eachgraphics multiprocessor 2934 outputs processed tasks to the datacrossbar 2940 to provide the processed task to another processingcluster 2914 for further processing or to store the processed task in anL2 cache, local parallel processor memory, or system memory via thememory crossbar 2916. A preROP 2942 (pre-raster operations unit) isconfigured to receive data from graphics multiprocessor 2934, directdata to ROP units, which may be located with partition units asdescribed herein (e.g., partition units 2920A-2920N of FIG. 29). ThepreROP 2942 unit can perform optimizations for color blending, organizepixel color data, and perform address translations.

It will be appreciated that the core architecture described herein isillustrative and that variations and modifications are possible. Anynumber of processing units, e.g., graphics multiprocessor 2934, textureunits 2936, preROPs 2942, etc., may be included within a processingcluster 2914. Further, while only one processing cluster 2914 is shown,a parallel processing unit as described herein may include any number ofinstances of the processing cluster 2914. In one embodiment, eachprocessing cluster 2914 can be configured to operate independently ofother processing clusters 2914 using separate and distinct processingunits, L1 caches, etc.

FIG. 29D shows a graphics multiprocessor 2934, according to oneembodiment. In such embodiment the graphics multiprocessor 2934 coupleswith the pipeline manager 2932 of the processing cluster 2914. Thegraphics multiprocessor 2934 has an execution pipeline including but notlimited to an instruction cache 2952, an instruction unit 2954, anaddress mapping unit 2956, a register file 2958, one or more generalpurpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) cores 2962, and one or moreload/store units 2966. The GPGPU cores 2962 and load/store units 2966are coupled with cache memory 2972 and shared memory 2970 via a memoryand cache interconnect 2968.

In one embodiment, the instruction cache 2952 receives a stream ofinstructions to execute from the pipeline manager 2932. The instructionsare cached in the instruction cache 2952 and dispatched for execution bythe instruction unit 2954. The instruction unit 2954 can dispatchinstructions as thread groups (e.g., warps), with each thread of thethread group assigned to a different execution unit within GPGPU core2962. An instruction can access any of a local, shared, or globaladdress space by specifying an address within a unified address space.The address mapping unit 2956 can be used to translate addresses in theunified address space into a distinct memory address that can beaccessed by the load/store units 2966.

The register file 2958 provides a set of registers for the functionalunits of the graphics multiprocessor 324. The register file 2958provides temporary storage for operands connected to the data paths ofthe functional units (e.g., GPGPU cores 2962, load/store units 2966) ofthe graphics multiprocessor 324. In one embodiment, the register file2958 is divided between each of the functional units such that eachfunctional unit is allocated a dedicated portion of the register file2958. In one embodiment, the register file 2958 is divided between thedifferent warps being executed by the graphics multiprocessor 324.

The GPGPU cores 2962 can each include floating point units (FPUs) and/orinteger arithmetic logic units (ALUs) that are used to executeinstructions of the graphics multiprocessor 324. The GPGPU cores 2962can be similar in architecture or can differ in architecture, accordingto embodiments. For example and in one embodiment, a first portion ofthe GPGPU cores 2962 include a single precision FPU and an integer ALUwhile a second portion of the GPGPU cores include a double precisionFPU. In one embodiment the FPUs can implement the IEEE 754-2008 standardfor floating point arithmetic or enable variable precision floatingpoint arithmetic. The graphics multiprocessor 324 can additionallyinclude one or more fixed function or special function units to performspecific functions such as copy rectangle or pixel blending operations.In one embodiment one or more of the GPGPU cores can also include fixedor special function logic.

In one embodiment the GPGPU cores 2962 include SIMD logic capable ofperforming a single instruction on multiple sets of data. In oneembodiment GPGPU cores 2962 can physically execute SIMD4, SIMD8, andSIMD16 instructions and logically execute SIMD1, SIMD2, and SIMD32instructions. The SIMD instructions for the GPGPU cores can be generatedat compile time by a shader compiler or automatically generated whenexecuting programs written and compiled for single program multiple data(SPMD) or SIMT architectures. Multiple threads of a program configuredfor the SIMT execution model can executed via a single SIMD instruction.For example and in one embodiment, eight SIMT threads that perform thesame or similar operations can be executed in parallel via a singleSIMD8 logic unit.

The memory and cache interconnect 2968 is an interconnect network thatconnects each of the functional units of the graphics multiprocessor 324to the register file 2958 and to the shared memory 2970. In oneembodiment, the memory and cache interconnect 2968 is a crossbarinterconnect that allows the load/store unit 2966 to implement load andstore operations between the shared memory 2970 and the register file2958. The register file 2958 can operate at the same frequency as theGPGPU cores 2962, thus data transfer between the GPGPU cores 2962 andthe register file 2958 is very low latency. The shared memory 2970 canbe used to enable communication between threads that execute on thefunctional units within the graphics multiprocessor 2934. The cachememory 2972 can be used as a data cache for example, to cache texturedata communicated between the functional units and the texture unit2936. The shared memory 2970 can also be used as a program managedcached. Threads executing on the GPGPU cores 2962 can programmaticallystore data within the shared memory in addition to the automaticallycached data that is stored within the cache memory 2972.

FIGS. 30A-30B illustrate additional graphics multiprocessors, accordingto embodiments. The illustrated graphics multiprocessors 3025, 3050 arevariants of the graphics multiprocessor 2934 of FIG. 29C. Theillustrated graphics multiprocessors 3025, 3050 can be configured as astreaming multiprocessor (SM) capable of simultaneous execution of alarge number of execution threads.

FIG. 30A shows a graphics multiprocessor 3025 according to an additionalembodiment. The graphics multiprocessor 3025 includes multipleadditional instances of execution resource units relative to thegraphics multiprocessor 2934 of FIG. 29D. For example, the graphicsmultiprocessor 3025 can include multiple instances of the instructionunit 3032A-3032B, register file 3034A-3034B, and texture unit(s)3044A-3044B. The graphics multiprocessor 3025 also includes multiplesets of graphics or compute execution units (e.g., GPGPU core3036A-3036B, GPGPU core 3037A-3037B, GPGPU core 3038A-3038B) andmultiple sets of load/store units 3040A-3040B. In one embodiment theexecution resource units have a common instruction cache 3030, textureand/or data cache memory 3042, and shared memory 3046.

The various components can communicate via an interconnect fabric 3027.In one embodiment the interconnect fabric 3027 includes one or morecrossbar switches to enable communication between the various componentsof the graphics multiprocessor 3025. In one embodiment the interconnectfabric 3027 is a separate, high-speed network fabric layer upon whicheach component of the graphics multiprocessor 3025 is stacked. Thecomponents of the graphics multiprocessor 3025 communicate with remotecomponents via the interconnect fabric 3027. For example, the GPGPUcores 3036A-3036B, 3037A-3037B, and 30378A-3038B can each communicatewith shared memory 3046 via the interconnect fabric 3027. Theinterconnect fabric 3027 can arbitrate communication within the graphicsmultiprocessor 3025 to ensure a fair bandwidth allocation betweencomponents.

FIG. 30B shows a graphics multiprocessor 3050 according to an additionalembodiment. The graphics processor includes multiple sets of executionresources 3056A-3056D, where each set of execution resource includesmultiple instruction units, register files, GPGPU cores, and load storeunits, as illustrated in FIG. 29D and FIG. 30A. The execution resources3056A-3056D can work in concert with texture unit(s) 3060A-3060D fortexture operations, while sharing an instruction cache 3054, and sharedmemory 3062. In one embodiment the execution resources 3056A-3056D canshare an instruction cache 3054 and shared memory 3062, as well asmultiple instances of a texture and/or data cache memory 3058A-3058B.The various components can communicate via an interconnect fabric 3052similar to the interconnect fabric 3027 of FIG. 30A.

Persons skilled in the art will understand that the architecturedescribed in FIGS. 28, 29A-29D, and 30A-3B are descriptive and notlimiting as to the scope of the present embodiments. Thus, thetechniques described herein may be implemented on any properlyconfigured processing unit, including, without limitation, one or moremobile application processors, one or more desktop or server centralprocessing units (CPUs) including multi-core CPUs, one or more parallelprocessing units, such as the parallel processing unit 2902 of FIG. 29,as well as one or more graphics processors or special purpose processingunits, without departure from the scope of the embodiments describedherein.

In some embodiments a parallel processor or GPGPU as described herein iscommunicatively coupled to host/processor cores to accelerate graphicsoperations, machine-learning operations, pattern analysis operations,and various general purpose GPU (GPGPU) functions. The GPU may becommunicatively coupled to the host processor/cores over a bus or otherinterconnect (e.g., a high speed interconnect such as PCIe or NVLink).In other embodiments, the GPU may be integrated on the same package orchip as the cores and communicatively coupled to the cores over aninternal processor bus/interconnect (i.e., internal to the package orchip). Regardless of the manner in which the GPU is connected, theprocessor cores may allocate work to the GPU in the form of sequences ofcommands/instructions contained in a work descriptor. The GPU then usesdedicated circuitry/logic for efficiently processing thesecommands/instructions.

Techniques for GPU to Host Processor Interconnection

FIG. 31A illustrates an exemplary architecture in which a plurality ofGPUs 3110-3113 are communicatively coupled to a plurality of multi-coreprocessors 3105-3106 over high-speed links 3140-3143 (e.g., buses,point-to-point interconnects, etc.). In one embodiment, the high-speedlinks 3140-3143 support a communication throughput of 4 GB/s, 30 GB/s,80 GB/s or higher, depending on the implementation. Various interconnectprotocols may be used including, but not limited to, PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 andNVLink 2.0. However, the underlying principles of the invention are notlimited to any particular communication protocol or throughput.

In addition, in one embodiment, two or more of the GPUs 3110-3113 areinterconnected over high-speed links 3144-3145, which may be implementedusing the same or different protocols/links than those used forhigh-speed links 3140-3143. Similarly, two or more of the multi-coreprocessors 3105-3106 may be connected over high speed link 3133 whichmay be symmetric multi-processor (SMP) buses operating at 20 GB/s, 30GB/s, 120 GB/s or higher. Alternatively, all communication between thevarious system components shown in FIG. 31A may be accomplished usingthe same protocols/links (e.g., over a common interconnection fabric).As mentioned, however, the underlying principles of the invention arenot limited to any particular type of interconnect technology.

In one embodiment, each multi-core processor 3105-3106 iscommunicatively coupled to a processor memory 3101-3102, via memoryinterconnects 3130-3131, respectively, and each GPU 3110-3113 iscommunicatively coupled to GPU memory 3120-3123 over GPU memoryinterconnects 3150-3153, respectively. The memory interconnects3130-3131 and 3150-3153 may utilize the same or different memory accesstechnologies. By way of example, and not limitation, the processormemories 3101-3102 and GPU memories 3120-3123 may be volatile memoriessuch as dynamic random access memories (DRAMs) (including stackedDRAMs), Graphics DDR SDRAM (GDDR) (e.g., GDDR5, GDDR6), or HighBandwidth Memory (HBM) and/or may be non-volatile memories such as 3DXPoint or Nano-Ram. In one embodiment, some portion of the memories maybe volatile memory and another portion may be non-volatile memory (e.g.,using a two-level memory (2LM) hierarchy).

As described below, although the various processors 3105-3106 and GPUs3110-3113 may be physically coupled to a particular memory 3101-3102,3120-3123, respectively, a unified memory architecture may beimplemented in which the same virtual system address space (alsoreferred to as the “effective address” space) is distributed among allof the various physical memories. For example, processor memories3101-3102 may each comprise 64 GB of the system memory address space andGPU memories 3120-3123 may each comprise 32 GB of the system memoryaddress space (resulting in a total of 256 GB addressable memory in thisexample).

FIG. 31B illustrates additional details for an interconnection between amulti-core processor 3107 and a graphics acceleration module 3146 inaccordance with one embodiment. The graphics acceleration module 3146may include one or more GPU chips integrated on a line card which iscoupled to the processor 3107 via the high-speed link 3140.Alternatively, the graphics acceleration module 3146 may be integratedon the same package or chip as the processor 3107.

The illustrated processor 3107 includes a plurality of cores3160A-3160D, each with a translation lookaside buffer 3161A-3161D andone or more caches 3162A-3162D. The cores may include various othercomponents for executing instructions and processing data which are notillustrated to avoid obscuring the underlying principles of theinvention (e.g., instruction fetch units, branch prediction units,decoders, execution units, reorder buffers, etc.). The caches3162A-3162D may comprise level 1 (L1) and level 2 (L2) caches. Inaddition, one or more shared caches 3126 may be included in the cachinghierarchy and shared by sets of the cores 3160A-3160D. For example, oneembodiment of the processor 3107 includes 24 cores, each with its own L1cache, twelve shared L2 caches, and twelve shared L3 caches. In thisembodiment, one of the L2 and L3 caches are shared by two adjacentcores. The processor 3107 and the graphics accelerator integrationmodule 3146 connect with system memory 3141, which may include processormemories 3101-3102

Coherency is maintained for data and instructions stored in the variouscaches 3162A-3162D, 3156 and system memory 3141 via inter-corecommunication over a coherence bus 3164. For example, each cache mayhave cache coherency logic/circuitry associated therewith to communicateto over the coherence bus 3164 in response to detected reads or writesto particular cache lines. In one implementation, a cache snoopingprotocol is implemented over the coherence bus 3164 to snoop cacheaccesses. Cache snooping/coherency techniques are well understood bythose of skill in the art and will not be described in detail here toavoid obscuring the underlying principles of the invention.

In one embodiment, a proxy circuit 3125 communicatively couples thegraphics acceleration module 3146 to the coherence bus 3164, allowingthe graphics acceleration module 3146 to participate in the cachecoherence protocol as a peer of the cores. In particular, an interface3135 provides connectivity to the proxy circuit 3125 over high-speedlink 3140 (e.g., a PCIe bus, NVLink, etc.) and an interface 3137connects the graphics acceleration module 3146 to the link 3140.

In one implementation, an accelerator integration circuit 3136 providescache management, memory access, context management, and interruptmanagement services on behalf of a plurality of graphics processingengines 3131, 3132, N of the graphics acceleration module 3146. Thegraphics processing engines 3131, 3132, N may each comprise a separategraphics processing unit (GPU). Alternatively, the graphics processingengines 3131, 3132, N may comprise different types of graphicsprocessing engines within a GPU such as graphics execution units, mediaprocessing engines (e.g., video encoders/decoders), samplers, and blitengines. In other words, the graphics acceleration module may be a GPUwith a plurality of graphics processing engines 3131-3132, N or thegraphics processing engines 3131-3132, N may be individual GPUsintegrated on a common package, line card, or chip.

In one embodiment, the accelerator integration circuit 3136 includes amemory management unit (MMU) 3139 for performing various memorymanagement functions such as virtual-to-physical memory translations(also referred to as effective-to-real memory translations) and memoryaccess protocols for accessing system memory 3141. The MMU 3139 may alsoinclude a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) (not shown) for caching thevirtual/effective to physical/real address translations. In oneimplementation, a cache 3138 stores commands and data for efficientaccess by the graphics processing engines 3131-3132, N. In oneembodiment, the data stored in cache 3138 and graphics memories3133-3134, N is kept coherent with the core caches 3162A-3162D, 3156 andsystem memory 3111. As mentioned, this may be accomplished via proxycircuit 3125 which takes part in the cache coherency mechanism on behalfof cache 3138 and memories 3133-3134, N (e.g., sending updates to thecache 3138 related to modifications/accesses of cache lines on processorcaches 3162A-3162D, 3156 and receiving updates from the cache 3138).

A set of registers 3145 store context data for threads executed by thegraphics processing engines 3131-3132, N and a context managementcircuit 3148 manages the thread contexts. For example, the contextmanagement circuit 3148 may perform save and restore operations to saveand restore contexts of the various threads during contexts switches(e.g., where a first thread is saved and a second thread is stored sothat the second thread can be execute by a graphics processing engine).For example, on a context switch, the context management circuit 3148may store current register values to a designated region in memory(e.g., identified by a context pointer). It may then restore theregister values when returning to the context. In one embodiment, aninterrupt management circuit 3147 receives and processes interruptsreceived from system devices.

In one implementation, virtual/effective addresses from a graphicsprocessing engine 3131 are translated to real/physical addresses insystem memory 3111 by the MMU 3139. One embodiment of the acceleratorintegration circuit 3136 supports multiple (e.g., 4, 8, 16) graphicsaccelerator modules 3146 and/or other accelerator devices. The graphicsaccelerator module 3146 may be dedicated to a single applicationexecuted on the processor 3107 or may be shared between multipleapplications. In one embodiment, a virtualized graphics executionenvironment is presented in which the resources of the graphicsprocessing engines 3131-3132, N are shared with multiple applications orvirtual machines (VMs). The resources may be subdivided into “slices”which are allocated to different VMs and/or applications based on theprocessing requirements and priorities associated with the VMs and/orapplications.

Thus, the accelerator integration circuit acts as a bridge to the systemfor the graphics acceleration module 3146 and provides addresstranslation and system memory cache services. In addition, theaccelerator integration circuit 3136 may provide virtualizationfacilities for the host processor to manage virtualization of thegraphics processing engines, interrupts, and memory management.

Because hardware resources of the graphics processing engines 3131-3132,N are mapped explicitly to the real address space seen by the hostprocessor 3107, any host processor can address these resources directlyusing an effective address value. One function of the acceleratorintegration circuit 3136, in one embodiment, is the physical separationof the graphics processing engines 3131-3132, N so that they appear tothe system as independent units.

As mentioned, in the illustrated embodiment, one or more graphicsmemories 3133-3134, M are coupled to each of the graphics processingengines 3131-3132, N, respectively. The graphics memories 3133-3134, Mstore instructions and data being processed by each of the graphicsprocessing engines 3131-3132, N. The graphics memories 3133-3134, M maybe volatile memories such as DRAMs (including stacked DRAMs), GDDRmemory (e.g., GDDR5, GDDR6), or HBM, and/or may be non-volatile memoriessuch as 3D XPoint or Nano-Ram.

In one embodiment, to reduce data traffic over link 3140, biasingtechniques are used to ensure that the data stored in graphics memories3133-3134, M is data which will be used most frequently by the graphicsprocessing engines 3131-3132, N and preferably not used by the cores3160A-3160D (at least not frequently). Similarly, the biasing mechanismattempts to keep data needed by the cores (and preferably not thegraphics processing engines 3131-3132, N) within the caches 3162A-3162D,3156 of the cores and system memory 3111.

FIG. 31C illustrates another embodiment in which the acceleratorintegration circuit 3136 is integrated within the processor 3107. Inthis embodiment, the graphics processing engines 3131-3132, Ncommunicate directly over the high-speed link 3140 to the acceleratorintegration circuit 3136 via interface 3137 and interface 3135 (which,again, may be utilize any form of bus or interface protocol). Theaccelerator integration circuit 3136 may perform the same operations asthose described with respect to FIG. 31B, but potentially at a higherthroughput given its close proximity to the coherency bus 3162 andcaches 3162A-3162D, 3126.

One embodiment supports different programming models including adedicated-process programming model (no graphics acceleration modulevirtualization) and shared programming models (with virtualization). Thelatter may include programming models which are controlled by theaccelerator integration circuit 3136 and programming models which arecontrolled by the graphics acceleration module 3146.

In one embodiment of the dedicated process model, graphics processingengines 3131-3132, N are dedicated to a single application or processunder a single operating system. The single application can funnel otherapplication requests to the graphics engines 3131-3132, N, providingvirtualization within a VM/partition.

In the dedicated-process programming models, the graphics processingengines 3131-3132, N, may be shared by multiple VM/applicationpartitions. The shared models require a system hypervisor to virtualizethe graphics processing engines 3131-3132, N to allow access by eachoperating system. For single-partition systems without a hypervisor, thegraphics processing engines 3131-3132, N are owned by the operatingsystem. In both cases, the operating system can virtualize the graphicsprocessing engines 3131-3132, N to provide access to each process orapplication.

For the shared programming model, the graphics acceleration module 3146or an individual graphics processing engine 3131-3132, N selects aprocess element using a process handle. In one embodiment, processelements are stored in system memory 3111 and are addressable using theeffective address to real address translation techniques describedherein. The process handle may be an implementation-specific valueprovided to the host process when registering its context with thegraphics processing engine 3131-3132, N (that is, calling systemsoftware to add the process element to the process element linked list).The lower 16-bits of the process handle may be the offset of the processelement within the process element linked list.

FIG. 31D illustrates an exemplary accelerator integration slice 3190. Asused herein, a “slice” comprises a specified portion of the processingresources of the accelerator integration circuit 3136. Applicationeffective address space 3182 within system memory 3111 stores processelements 3183. In one embodiment, the process elements 3183 are storedin response to GPU invocations 3181 from applications 3180 executed onthe processor 3107. A process element 3183 contains the process statefor the corresponding application 3180. A work descriptor (WD) 3184contained in the process element 3183 can be a single job requested byan application or may contain a pointer to a queue of jobs. In thelatter case, the WD 3184 is a pointer to the job request queue in theapplication's address space 3182.

The graphics acceleration module 3146 and/or the individual graphicsprocessing engines 3131-3132, N can be shared by all or a subset of theprocesses in the system. Embodiments of the invention include aninfrastructure for setting up the process state and sending a WD 3184 toa graphics acceleration module 3146 to start a job in a virtualizedenvironment.

In one implementation, the dedicated-process programming model isimplementation-specific. In this model, a single process owns thegraphics acceleration module 3146 or an individual graphics processingengine 3131. Because the graphics acceleration module 3146 is owned by asingle process, the hypervisor initializes the accelerator integrationcircuit 3136 for the owning partition and the operating systeminitializes the accelerator integration circuit 3136 for the owningprocess at the time when the graphics acceleration module 3146 isassigned.

In operation, a WD fetch unit 3191 in the accelerator integration slice3190 fetches the next WD 3184 which includes an indication of the workto be done by one of the graphics processing engines of the graphicsacceleration module 3146. Data from the WD 3184 may be stored inregisters 3145 and used by the MMU 3139, interrupt management circuit3147 and/or context management circuit 3146 as illustrated. For example,one embodiment of the MMU 3139 includes segment/page walk circuitry foraccessing segment/page tables 3186 within the OS virtual address space3185. The interrupt management circuit 3147 may process interrupt events3192 received from the graphics acceleration module 3146. Whenperforming graphics operations, an effective address 3193 generated by agraphics processing engine 3131-3132, N is translated to a real addressby the MMU 3139.

In one embodiment, the same set of registers 3145 are duplicated foreach graphics processing engine 3131-3132, N and/or graphicsacceleration module 3146 and may be initialized by the hypervisor oroperating system. Each of these duplicated registers may be included inan accelerator integration slice 3190. Exemplary registers that may beinitialized by the hypervisor are shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Hypervisor Initialized Registers 1 Slice Control Register 2 RealAddress (RA) Scheduled Processes Area Pointer 3 Authority Mask OverrideRegister 4 Interrupt Vector Table Entry Offset 5 Interrupt Vector TableEntry Limit 6 State Register 7 Logical Partition ID 8 Real address (RA)Hypervisor Accelerator Utilization Record Pointer 9 Storage DescriptionRegister

Exemplary registers that may be initialized by the operating system areshown in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Operating System Initialized Registers 1 Process and ThreadIdentification 2 Effective Address (EA) Context Save/Restore Pointer 3Virtual Address (VA) Accelerator Utilization Record Pointer 4 VirtualAddress (VA) Storage Segment Table Pointer 5 Authority Mask 6 Workdescriptor

In one embodiment, each WD 3184 is specific to a particular graphicsacceleration module 3146 and/or graphics processing engine 3131-3132, N.It contains all the information a graphics processing engine 3131-3132,N requires to do its work or it can be a pointer to a memory locationwhere the application has set up a command queue of work to becompleted.

FIG. 31E illustrates additional details for one embodiment of a sharedmodel. This embodiment includes a hypervisor real address space 3198 inwhich a process element list 3199 is stored. The hypervisor real addressspace 3198 is accessible via a hypervisor 3196 which virtualizes thegraphics acceleration module engines for the operating system 3195.

The shared programming models allow for all or a subset of processesfrom all or a subset of partitions in the system to use a graphicsacceleration module 3146. There are two programming models where thegraphics acceleration module 3146 is shared by multiple processes andpartitions: time-sliced shared and graphics directed shared.

In this model, the system hypervisor 3196 owns the graphics accelerationmodule 3146 and makes its function available to all operating systems3195. For a graphics acceleration module 3146 to support virtualizationby the system hypervisor 3196, the graphics acceleration module 3146 mayadhere to the following requirements: 1) An application's job requestmust be autonomous (that is, the state does not need to be maintainedbetween jobs), or the graphics acceleration module 3146 must provide acontext save and restore mechanism. 2) An application's job request isguaranteed by the graphics acceleration module 3146 to complete in aspecified amount of time, including any translation faults, or thegraphics acceleration module 3146 provides the ability to preempt theprocessing of the job. 3) The graphics acceleration module 3146 must beguaranteed fairness between processes when operating in the directedshared programming model.

In one embodiment, for the shared model, the application 3180 isrequired to make an operating system 3195 system call with a graphicsacceleration module 3146 type, a work descriptor (WD), an authority maskregister (AMR) value, and a context save/restore area pointer (CSRP).The graphics acceleration module 3146 type describes the targetedacceleration function for the system call. The graphics accelerationmodule 3146 type may be a system-specific value. The WD is formattedspecifically for the graphics acceleration module 3146 and can be in theform of a graphics acceleration module 3146 command, an effectiveaddress pointer to a user-defined structure, an effective addresspointer to a queue of commands, or any other data structure to describethe work to be done by the graphics acceleration module 3146. In oneembodiment, the AMR value is the AMR state to use for the currentprocess. The value passed to the operating system is similar to anapplication setting the AMR. If the accelerator integration circuit 3136and graphics acceleration module 3146 implementations do not support aUser Authority Mask Override Register (UAMOR), the operating system mayapply the current UAMOR value to the AMR value before passing the AMR inthe hypervisor call. The hypervisor 3196 may optionally apply thecurrent Authority Mask Override Register (AMOR) value before placing theAMR into the process element 3183. In one embodiment, the CSRP is one ofthe registers 3145 containing the effective address of an area in theapplication's address space 3182 for the graphics acceleration module3146 to save and restore the context state. This pointer is optional ifno state is required to be saved between jobs or when a job ispreempted. The context save/restore area may be pinned system memory.

Upon receiving the system call, the operating system 3195 may verifythat the application 3180 has registered and been given the authority touse the graphics acceleration module 3146. The operating system 3195then calls the hypervisor 3196 with the information shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3 OS to Hypervisor Call Parameters 1 A work descriptor (WD) 2 AnAuthority Mask Register (AMR) value (potentially masked). 3 An effectiveaddress (EA) Context Save/Restore Area Pointer (CSRP) 4 A process ID(PID) and optional thread ID (TID) 5 A virtual address (VA) acceleratorutilization record pointer (AURP) 6 The virtual address of the storagesegment table pointer (SSTP) 7 A logical interrupt service number (LISN)

Upon receiving the hypervisor call, the hypervisor 3196 verifies thatthe operating system 3195 has registered and been given the authority touse the graphics acceleration module 3146. The hypervisor 3196 then putsthe process element 3183 into the process element linked list for thecorresponding graphics acceleration module 3146 type. The processelement may include the information shown in Table 4.

TABLE 4 Process Element Information 1 A work descriptor (WD) 2 AnAuthority Mask Register (AMR) value (potentially masked). 3 An effectiveaddress (EA) Context Save/Restore Area Pointer (CSRP) 4 A process ID(PID) and optional thread ID (TID) 5 A virtual address (VA) acceleratorutilization record pointer (AURP) 6 The virtual address of the storagesegment table pointer (SSTP) 7 A logical interrupt service number (LISN)8 Interrupt vector table, derived from the hypervisor call parameters. 9A state register (SR) value 10 A logical partition ID (LPID) 11 A realaddress (RA) hypervisor accelerator utilization record pointer 12 TheStorage Descriptor Register (SDR)

In one embodiment, the hypervisor initializes a plurality of acceleratorintegration slice 3190 registers 3145.

As illustrated in FIG. 31F, one embodiment of the invention employs aunified memory addressable via a common virtual memory address spaceused to access the physical processor memories 3101-3102 and GPUmemories 3120-3123. In this implementation, operations executed on theGPUs 3110-3113 utilize the same virtual/effective memory address spaceto access the processors memories 3101-3102 and vice versa, therebysimplifying programmability. In one embodiment, a first portion of thevirtual/effective address space is allocated to the processor memory3101, a second portion to the second processor memory 3102, a thirdportion to the GPU memory 3120, and so on. The entire virtual/effectivememory space (sometimes referred to as the effective address space) isthereby distributed across each of the processor memories 3101-3102 andGPU memories 3120-3123, allowing any processor or GPU to access anyphysical memory with a virtual address mapped to that memory.

In one embodiment, bias/coherence management circuitry 3194A-3194Ewithin one or more of the MMUs 3139A-3139E ensures cache coherencebetween the caches of the host processors (e.g., 3105) and the GPUs3110-3113 and implements biasing techniques indicating the physicalmemories in which certain types of data should be stored. While multipleinstances of bias/coherence management circuitry 3194A-3194E areillustrated in FIG. 31F, the bias/coherence circuitry may be implementedwithin the MMU of one or more host processors 3105 and/or within theaccelerator integration circuit 3136.

One embodiment allows GPU-attached memory 3120-3123 to be mapped as partof system memory, and accessed using shared virtual memory (SVM)technology, but without suffering the typical performance drawbacksassociated with full system cache coherence. The ability to GPU-attachedmemory 3120-3123 to be accessed as system memory without onerous cachecoherence overhead provides a beneficial operating environment for GPUoffload. This arrangement allows the host processor 3105 software tosetup operands and access computation results, without the overhead oftradition I/O DMA data copies. Such traditional copies involve drivercalls, interrupts and memory mapped I/O (MMIO) accesses that are allinefficient relative to simple memory accesses. At the same time, theability to access GPU attached memory 3120-3123 without cache coherenceoverheads can be critical to the execution time of an offloadedcomputation. In cases with substantial streaming write memory traffic,for example, cache coherence overhead can significantly reduce theeffective write bandwidth seen by a GPU 3110-3113. The efficiency ofoperand setup, the efficiency of results access, and the efficiency ofGPU computation all play a role in determining the effectiveness of GPUoffload.

In one implementation, the selection of between GPU bias and hostprocessor bias is driven by a bias tracker data structure. A bias tablemay be used, for example, which may be a page-granular structure (i.e.,controlled at the granularity of a memory page) that includes 1 or 2bits per GPU-attached memory page. The bias table may be implemented ina stolen memory range of one or more GPU-attached memories 3120-3123,with or without a bias cache in the GPU 3110-3113 (e.g., to cachefrequently/recently used entries of the bias table). Alternatively, theentire bias table may be maintained within the GPU.

In one implementation, the bias table entry associated with each accessto the GPU-attached memory 3120-3123 is accessed prior the actual accessto the GPU memory, causing the following operations. First, localrequests from the GPU 3110-3113 that find their page in GPU bias areforwarded directly to a corresponding GPU memory 3120-3123. Localrequests from the GPU that find their page in host bias are forwarded tothe processor 3105 (e.g., over a high-speed link as discussed above). Inone embodiment, requests from the processor 3105 that find the requestedpage in host processor bias complete the request like a normal memoryread. Alternatively, requests directed to a GPU-biased page may beforwarded to the GPU 3110-3113. The GPU may then transition the page toa host processor bias if it is not currently using the page.

The bias state of a page can be changed either by a software-basedmechanism, a hardware-assisted software-based mechanism, or, for alimited set of cases, a purely hardware-based mechanism.

One mechanism for changing the bias state employs an API call (e.g.OpenCL), which, in turn, calls the GPU's device driver which, in turn,sends a message (or enqueues a command descriptor) to the GPU directingit to change the bias state and, for some transitions, perform a cacheflushing operation in the host. The cache flushing operation is requiredfor a transition from host processor 3105 bias to GPU bias, but is notrequired for the opposite transition.

In one embodiment, cache coherency is maintained by temporarilyrendering GPU-biased pages uncacheable by the host processor 3105. Toaccess these pages, the processor 3105 may request access from the GPU3110 which may or may not grant access right away, depending on theimplementation. Thus, to reduce communication between the processor 3105and GPU 3110 it is beneficial to ensure that GPU-biased pages are thosewhich are required by the GPU but not the host processor 3105 and viceversa.

Graphics Processing Pipeline

FIG. 32 illustrates a graphics processing pipeline 3200, according to anembodiment. In one embodiment a graphics processor can implement theillustrated graphics processing pipeline 3200. The graphics processorcan be included within the parallel processing subsystems as describedherein, such as the parallel processor 2900 of FIG. 29, which, in oneembodiment, is a variant of the parallel processor(s) 2812 of FIG. 28.The various parallel processing systems can implement the graphicsprocessing pipeline 3200 via one or more instances of the parallelprocessing unit (e.g., parallel processing unit 2902 of FIG. 29) asdescribed herein. For example, a shader unit (e.g., graphicsmultiprocessor 3034 of FIG. 30) may be configured to perform thefunctions of one or more of a vertex processing unit 3204, atessellation control processing unit 3208, a tessellation evaluationprocessing unit 3212, a geometry processing unit 3216, and afragment/pixel processing unit 3224. The functions of data assembler3202, primitive assemblers 3206, 3214, 3218, tessellation unit 3210,rasterizer 3222, and raster operations unit 3226 may also be performedby other processing engines within a processing cluster (e.g.,processing cluster 214 of FIG. 3) and a corresponding partition unit(e.g., partition unit 220A-220N of FIG. 2). The graphics processingpipeline 3200 may also be implemented using dedicated processing unitsfor one or more functions. In one embodiment, one or more portions ofthe graphics processing pipeline 3200 can be performed by parallelprocessing logic within a general purpose processor (e.g., CPU). In oneembodiment, one or more portions of the graphics processing pipeline3200 can access on-chip memory (e.g., parallel processor memory 2922 asin FIG. 29) via a memory interface 3228, which may be an instance of thememory interface 2918 of FIG. 29.

In one embodiment the data assembler 3202 is a processing unit thatcollects vertex data for surfaces and primitives. The data assembler3202 then outputs the vertex data, including the vertex attributes, tothe vertex processing unit 3204. The vertex processing unit 3204 is aprogrammable execution unit that executes vertex shader programs,lighting and transforming vertex data as specified by the vertex shaderprograms. The vertex processing unit 3204 reads data that is stored incache, local or system memory for use in processing the vertex data andmay be programmed to transform the vertex data from an object-basedcoordinate representation to a world space coordinate space or anormalized device coordinate space.

A first instance of a primitive assembler 3206 receives vertexattributes from the vertex processing unit 320. The primitive assembler3206 readings stored vertex attributes as needed and constructs graphicsprimitives for processing by tessellation control processing unit 3208.The graphics primitives include triangles, line segments, points,patches, and so forth, as supported by various graphics processingapplication programming interfaces (APIs).

The tessellation control processing unit 3208 treats the input verticesas control points for a geometric patch. The control points aretransformed from an input representation from the patch (e.g., thepatch's bases) to a representation that is suitable for use in surfaceevaluation by the tessellation evaluation processing unit 3212. Thetessellation control processing unit 3208 can also compute tessellationfactors for edges of geometric patches. A tessellation factor applies toa single edge and quantifies a view-dependent level of detail associatedwith the edge. A tessellation unit 3210 is configured to receive thetessellation factors for edges of a patch and to tessellate the patchinto multiple geometric primitives such as line, triangle, orquadrilateral primitives, which are transmitted to a tessellationevaluation processing unit 3212. The tessellation evaluation processingunit 3212 operates on parameterized coordinates of the subdivided patchto generate a surface representation and vertex attributes for eachvertex associated with the geometric primitives.

A second instance of a primitive assembler 3214 receives vertexattributes from the tessellation evaluation processing unit 3212,reading stored vertex attributes as needed, and constructs graphicsprimitives for processing by the geometry processing unit 3216. Thegeometry processing unit 3216 is a programmable execution unit thatexecutes geometry shader programs to transform graphics primitivesreceived from primitive assembler 3214 as specified by the geometryshader programs. In one embodiment the geometry processing unit 3216 isprogrammed to subdivide the graphics primitives into one or more newgraphics primitives and calculate parameters used to rasterize the newgraphics primitives.

In some embodiments the geometry processing unit 3216 can add or deleteelements in the geometry stream. The geometry processing unit 3216outputs the parameters and vertices specifying new graphics primitivesto primitive assembler 3218. The primitive assembler 3218 receives theparameters and vertices from the geometry processing unit 3216 andconstructs graphics primitives for processing by a viewport scale, cull,and clip unit 3220. The geometry processing unit 3216 reads data that isstored in parallel processor memory or system memory for use inprocessing the geometry data. The viewport scale, cull, and clip unit3220 performs clipping, culling, and viewport scaling and outputsprocessed graphics primitives to a rasterizer 3222.

The rasterizer 3222 can perform depth culling and other depth-basedoptimizations. The rasterizer 3222 also performs scan conversion on thenew graphics primitives to generate fragments and output those fragmentsand associated coverage data to the fragment/pixel processing unit 3224.The fragment/pixel processing unit 3224 is a programmable execution unitthat is configured to execute fragment shader programs or pixel shaderprograms. The fragment/pixel processing unit 3224 transforming fragmentsor pixels received from rasterizer 3222, as specified by the fragment orpixel shader programs. For example, the fragment/pixel processing unit3224 may be programmed to perform operations included but not limited totexture mapping, shading, blending, texture correction and perspectivecorrection to produce shaded fragments or pixels that are output to araster operations unit 3226. The fragment/pixel processing unit 3224 canread data that is stored in either the parallel processor memory or thesystem memory for use when processing the fragment data. Fragment orpixel shader programs may be configured to shade at sample, pixel, tile,or other granularities depending on the sampling rate configured for theprocessing units.

The raster operations unit 3226 is a processing unit that performsraster operations including, but not limited to stencil, z test,blending, and the like, and outputs pixel data as processed graphicsdata to be stored in graphics memory (e.g., parallel processor memory222 as in FIG. 2, and/or system memory 104 as in FIG. 1, to be displayedon the one or more display device(s) 110 or for further processing byone of the one or more processor(s) 102 or parallel processor(s) 112. Insome embodiments the raster operations unit 3226 is configured tocompress z or color data that is written to memory and decompress z orcolor data that is read from memory.

In embodiments, the term “engine” or “module” or “logic” may refer to,be part of, or include an application specific integrated circuit(ASIC), an electronic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, orgroup), and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that execute one ormore software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit,and/or other suitable components that provide the describedfunctionality. In embodiments, an engine or a module may be implementedin firmware, hardware, software, or any combination of firmware,hardware, and software.

Embodiments of the invention may include various steps, which have beendescribed above. The steps may be embodied in machine-executableinstructions which may be used to cause a general-purpose orspecial-purpose processor to perform the steps. Alternatively, thesesteps may be performed by specific hardware components that containhardwired logic for performing the steps, or by any combination ofprogrammed computer components and custom hardware components.

As described herein, instructions may refer to specific configurationsof hardware such as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)configured to perform certain operations or having a predeterminedfunctionality or software instructions stored in memory embodied in anon-transitory computer readable medium. Thus, the techniques shown inthe figures can be implemented using code and data stored and executedon one or more electronic devices (e.g., an end station, a networkelement, etc.). Such electronic devices store and communicate(internally and/or with other electronic devices over a network) codeand data using computer machine-readable media, such as non-transitorycomputer machine-readable storage media (e.g., magnetic disks; opticaldisks; random access memory; read only memory; flash memory devices;phase-change memory) and transitory computer machine-readablecommunication media (e.g., electrical, optical, acoustical or other formof propagated signals—such as carrier waves, infrared signals, digitalsignals, etc.).

In addition, such electronic devices typically include a set of one ormore processors coupled to one or more other components, such as one ormore storage devices (non-transitory machine-readable storage media),user input/output devices (e.g., a keyboard, a touchscreen, and/or adisplay), and network connections. The coupling of the set of processorsand other components is typically through one or more busses and bridges(also termed as bus controllers). The storage device and signalscarrying the network traffic respectively represent one or moremachine-readable storage media and machine-readable communication media.Thus, the storage device of a given electronic device typically storescode and/or data for execution on the set of one or more processors ofthat electronic device. Of course, one or more parts of an embodiment ofthe invention may be implemented using different combinations ofsoftware, firmware, and/or hardware. Throughout this detaileddescription, for the purposes of explanation, numerous specific detailswere set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of thepresent invention. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in theart that the invention may be practiced without some of these specificdetails. In certain instances, well known structures and functions werenot described in elaborate detail in order to avoid obscuring thesubject matter of the present invention. Accordingly, the scope andspirit of the invention should be judged in terms of the claims whichfollow.

What is claimed is:
 1. A processor comprising: a command streamer toqueue commands from a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), the commandsto be distributed from the command streamer and executed by graphicsprocessing resources of a graphics processing unit (GPU); a tile cacheto store graphics data associated with the plurality of VMs as thecommands are executed by the graphics processing resources; and tilecache allocation hardware logic to allocate a first portion of the tilecache to a first VM and a second portion of the tile cache to a secondVM, wherein a priority associated with each of the plurality of VMs andsizes of the first portion and second portion of the tile cache areselected in accordance with the priorities; the tile cache allocationhardware logic to further allocate a first region in system memory tostore spill-over data for the first VM when the first portion of thetile cache allocated to the first VM becomes full and the second portionof the tile cache allocated to the second VM is available.
 2. Theprocessor as in claim 1 wherein the tile cache allocation hardware logiccomprises circuitry and/or logic to determine whether requested data isstored in the tile cache and, if not, to send a request to the firstregion in memory.
 3. The processor as in claim 1 wherein the tile cacheallocation hardware logic is to allocate a relatively larger size forthe first portion than the second portion if the first VM has arelatively higher priority than the second VM.
 4. The processor as inclaim 1 further comprising: a shared local memory (SLM) to be shared bythe first VM and the second VM; and an SLM controller to allocate afirst portion of the SLM to the first VM and a second portion of the SLMto the second VM; the SLM controller to further allocate a second regionin the system memory to store spill-over data when at least one of thefirst portion of the SLM and the second portion of the SLM becomes full.5. The processor as in claim 4 wherein the SLM controller comprisescircuitry and/or logic to determine whether requested data is stored inthe SLM and, if not, to send a request to the second region in memory.6. The processor as in claim 4 wherein the SLM controller comprisesprioritization logic to determine a priority associated with each of theplurality of VMs and to determine a size of the first portion and secondportion of the SLM in accordance with the priorities.
 7. The processoras in claim 6 wherein the SLM controller is to allocate a relativelylarger size for the first portion than the second portion of the SLM ifthe first VM has a relatively higher priority than the second VM.
 8. Theprocessor as in claim 1 wherein the graphics processing resources aresubdivided into a plurality of slices, the processor further comprising:a power/performance management unit to independently set at least one ofvoltage and frequency provided to each of the plurality of slices basedon identifying the slices used to process the first and second VMs andpriorities associated with the first VM and the second VM.
 9. Theprocessor as in claim 1, wherein one or more counters are programmed inaccordance with relative priorities of the plurality of VMs.
 10. Theprocessor as in claim 9, wherein the one or more counters count numbersof VM access to a memory fabric.
 11. The processor as in claim 9,wherein the one or more counters count numbers of elapsed cycles. 12.The processor as in claim 1, wherein storing the spill-over data in thesystem memory comprises translating guest virtual addresses of the firstVM to guest page numbers, and translating the guest page numbers tophysical page numbers.
 13. The processor as in claim 1, wherein thefirst region is to store spill-over data for the second VM when thesecond portion of the tile cache allocated to the second VM becomes fulland the first portion of the tile cache allocated to the first VM isavailable.
 14. The processor as in claim 13, wherein the first VM is tostore the spill-over data using a first base address, and the second VMis to store the spill-over data using a second base address differentfrom the first base address.
 15. A method comprising: queuing commandsfrom a plurality of virtual machines (VMs), the commands to bedistributed and executed by graphics processing resources of a graphicsprocessing unit (GPU); storing graphics data associated with theplurality of VMs in a tile cache as the commands are executed by thegraphics processing resources; allocating a first portion of the tilecache to a first VM and a second portion of the tile cache to a secondVM, wherein a priority associated with each of the plurality of VMs andsizes of the first portion and second portion of the tile cache areselected in accordance with the priorities; and allocating a firstregion in system memory to store spill-over data for the first VM whenthe first portion of the tile cache allocated to the first VM becomesfull and the second portion of the tile cache allocated to the second VMis available.
 16. The method as in claim 15 further comprising:determining whether requested data is stored in the tile cache and, ifnot, sending a request to the first region in memory.
 17. The method asin claim 15 wherein a relatively larger size is to be allocated for thefirst portion compared to the second portion if the first VM has arelatively higher priority than the second VM.
 18. The method as inclaim 15 further comprising: allocating a first portion of a sharedlocal memory (SLM) to the first VM and a second portion of the SLM tothe second VM; and allocating a second region in the system memory tostore spill-over data when at least one of the first portion of the SLMand the second portion of the SLM becomes full.
 19. The method as inclaim 18 further comprising: determining whether requested data isstored in the SLM and, if not, sending a request to the second region inmemory.
 20. The method as in claim 18 further comprising: determining apriority associated with each of the plurality of VMs; and selecting asize of the first portion and second portion of the SLM in accordancewith the priorities.
 21. The method as in claim 20 further comprising:allocating a relatively larger size for the first portion than thesecond portion of the SLM if the first VM has a relatively higherpriority than the second VM.
 22. The method as in claim 15 wherein thegraphics processing resources are subdivided into a plurality of slices,the method further comprising: independently setting at least one ofvoltage and frequency provided to each of the plurality of slices basedon identifying the slices used to process the first and second VMs andpriorities associated with the first VM and the second VM.
 23. Anon-transitory machine-readable medium having program code storedthereon which, when executed by a machine, causes the machine toperform: queuing commands from a plurality of virtual machines (VMs),the commands to be distributed and executed by graphics processingresources of a graphics processing unit (GPU); storing graphics dataassociated with the plurality of VMs in a tile cache as the commands areexecuted by the graphics processing resources; allocating a firstportion of the tile cache to a first VM and a second portion of the tilecache to a second VM, wherein a priority associated with each of theplurality of VMs and sizes of the first portion and second portion ofthe tile cache are selected in accordance with the priorities; andallocating a first region in system memory to store spill-over data forthe first VM when the first portion of the tile cache allocated to thefirst VM becomes full and the second portion of the tile cache allocatedto the second VM is available.
 24. The non-transitory machine-readablemedium as in claim 23, wherein the machine is further caused to perform:determining whether requested data is stored in the tile cache and, ifnot, sending a request to the first region in memory.
 25. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 23 wherein arelatively larger size is to be allocated for the first portion comparedto the second portion if the first VM has a relatively higher prioritythan the second VM.
 26. The non-transitory machine-readable medium as inclaim 23, wherein the machine is further caused to perform: allocating afirst portion of a shared local memory (SLM) to the first VM and asecond portion of the SLM to the second VM; and allocating a secondregion in the system memory to store spill-over data when at least oneof the first portion of the SLM and the second portion of the SLMbecomes full.
 27. The non-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim26, wherein the machine is further caused to perform: determiningwhether requested data is stored in the SLM and, if not, sending arequest to the second region in memory.
 28. The non-transitorymachine-readable medium as in claim 26, wherein the machine is furthercaused to perform: determining a priority associated with each of theplurality of VMs; and selecting a size of the first portion and secondportion of the SLM in accordance with the priorities.
 29. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 28, wherein themachine is further caused to perform: allocating a relatively largersize for the first portion than the second portion of the SLM if thefirst VM has a relatively higher priority than the second VM.
 30. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 23 wherein thegraphics processing resources are subdivided into a plurality of slices,wherein the machine is further caused to perform: independently settingat least one of voltage and frequency provided to each of the pluralityof slices based on identifying the slices used to process the first andsecond VMs and priorities associated with the first VM and the secondVM.